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THE  MORAL  CRUSADER 

WILLIAM    LLOYD    GARRISON 

H  JBiograpbtcal 


FOUNDED   ON 


THE  STORY  OF  GARRISON'S  LIFE    TOLD 
BY  HIS  CHILDREN" 


BY 


GOLDWIN"   SMITH,  D.O.L. 


FUNK  &  WAGNALLS   COMPANY 
NEW  YORK    AND  LONDON 

1892 
Printed  in  the  United  States 


COPYRIGHT,  1892,  BY  THE 
FUNK   &    WAGNALLS   COMPANY 


[Registered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London,  England] 


THE  MORAL  CRUSADER,  W.  L.  GARRISON. 


INTEODUOTIOK 

THERE  is  sometimes  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  a 
nation  when  a  man  is  urgently  needed  to  prick  the 
national  conscience  on  a  moral  question.  The  man 
need  not  be  supremely  wise  after  the  fashion  of 
earthly  wisdom,  nor  supremely  strong  after  the 
fashion  of  earthly  strength.  But  he  must  be  him 
self  an  impersonation  of  conscience.  He  must  be 
perfectly  pure  and  disinterested,  free  not  only  from 
ambition  and  cupidity,  but  from  vanity,  from  mere 
love  of  excitement,  from  self-seeking  of  every  kind, 
as  well  as  brave,  energetic,  persevering,  and  endowed 
with  a  voice  which  can  make  itself  heard.  Such  a 
crisis  was  the  ascendency  of  the  Slave  Power  in  the 
United  States,  and  such  a  man  was  William  Lloyd 
Garrison.  His  character  is  interesting  in  its  weak 
ness  as  in  its  strength,  and  the  contemplation  of  it 
is  cheering,  as  it  shows  what  a  fund  of  moral  force 
a  society  sound  at  the  core  always  possesses,  dark 
as  may  be  the  apparent  outlook,  and  how  that  force 

(•) 

M808753 


may  be  called  forth,  perhaps  from  the  most  unsus 
pected  quarter,  in  the  hour  of  need. 

Garrison's  life  has  heen  told  by  his  children  with 
a  loving  care  and  minuteness  which  make  the  four 
portly  volumes  through  which  it  extends  a  model 
of  biographical  industry.  In  those  volumes  are 
-  comprised  the  archives  of  the  moral  as  distinguished 
from  the  political  movement  against  slavery.  They 
claim  a  place  in  all  libraries  of  American  history, 
but  to  libraries  their  bulk  confines  them.  It  fell  to 
the  lot  of  the  present  writer  to  notice  them  in  two 
numbers  of  Macmillan's  Magazine,  and  the  inter 
est  which  he  was  led  to  feel  in  the  subject,  combined 
with  the  reminiscences  awakened  in  his  own  mind 
by  their  narrative,  induced  him  to  compile  this  little 
volume.  More  than  a  compilation  the  volume  can 
hardly  pretend  to  be,  since,  for  its  material  it  is 
almost  entirely  beholden  to  the  larger  work,  so  far 
as  the  facts  are  concerned.  The  opinions,  of  course, 
are  the  author's  own  and  formed  from  his  own  point 
of  view,  which  is  that  of  an  Anglo-Canadian  who 
sympathized  with  the  American  friends  of  the  Anti- 
Slavery  cause.  The  authors  of  the  larger  work 
have  so  far  extended  their  confidence  to  the  present 
writer  as  to  sanction  his  use  of  the  materials  col 
lected  by  them :  they  are  in  no  way  responsible  for 
his  opinions.  In  forming  his  estimate  of  the  char 
acter  with  which  he  had  to  deal  he  has  had  the  ad- 

(4) 


vantage,  on  one  side,  of  the  memoir  on  "Garrison 
and  His  Times,"  written  by  Mr.  Oliver  Johnson,  one 
of  the  foremost,  ablest,  and  stanchest  of  Garrison's 
comrades  in  the  great  contest,  and,  on  the  other,  of 
the  "Life  of  James  G.  Birney,1'  written  by  Mr. 
William  Birney,  also  a  most  competent  exponent  of 
his  own  side  of  the  case.  He  has,  of  course,  availed 
himself  of  the  general  authorities  for  the  history  of 
the  time. 

To  the  military  heroism  of  the  struggle  against 
the  Slave  Power,  literary  monuments,  as  well  as 
monuments  of  marble,  numerous  and  splendid,  are 
being  raised.  Let  the  moral  heroism  also  have  its 
due.  The  interest  of  its  history,  if  less  thrilling,  is 
not  less  deep. 

In  dealing  with  the  story  of  Garrison's  life,*  an 
Anglo-Canadian  writer  is  not  encroaching  on  Ameri 
can  ground.  Garrison  was  recognized  as  a  fellow- 
laborer  with  Wilberforce,  Clarkson,  and  Buxton. 
He  belongs  not  only  to  the  United  States,  but  to 
England,  as  the  great  emancipating  nation,  and  to 
Canada,  as  the  asylum  of  the  slave. 

*  William  Lloyd  Garrison  [1805-1879]  :  The  Story  of  His  Life 
Told  by  His  Children.  Vols.  I. -IV.,  8vo.  New  York  :  The  Cen 
tury  Co.,  1885-89. 

(5) 


WILLIAM  LLOYD  GARRISON  was  born  on  the  10th 
of  December,  1SO;\  in  the  thriving  mercantile  town 
of  Newburyport,  Massachusetts.  His  father,  Abijah 
Garrison,  and  his  mother,  Fanny,  whose  maiden 
name  was  Lloyd,  had  migrated  to  New  England, 
as  many  then  did  and  many  have  done  since,  from 
the  British  colony  of  New  Brunswick.  Strange  and 
sad  to  say,  three  years  afterward  Abijah  Garrison, 
who  was  a  seafaring  man,  forever  deserted  his  wife 
and  children.  He  returned  to  New  Brunswick  and 
is  believed  to  have  wandered  on  before  his  death  to 
Canada.  He  is  said  to  have  loved  his  wife  and 
children,  and  his  reason  for  deserting  them  is  a 
mystery.  But  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  in  some 
way  connected  with  drink,  the  bane  of  society  and 
of  seafaring  men  above  all  others  in  those  days. 
Mrs.  Garrison,  who  was  an  excellent  woman,  cheer 
fully  took  up  as  a  mother  her  lonely  burden  and 
went  out  as  a  monthly  nurse.  She  was  not  without 
humble  friends  who  were  good  to  her  in  the  evil 
days.  Lloyd  learned  to  read  and  write  at  the  pri 
mary  school  and  was  afterward  for  three  months  at 


a  grammar  school,  but  this  he  was  obliged  to  leave 
that  he  might  earn  his  bread  by  helping  his  mother's 
friend,  Deacon  Bartlett,  to  saw  wood,  sharpen  saws, 
and  peddle  apples.  This  work  he  did  not  like,  and 
he  ran  away  from  the  deacon's  service,  but  was 
brought  back  with  the  young  companion  of  his  es 
capade  by  the  driver  of  the  mail-coach.  We  are 
told  that  he  was  a  thorough  boy  in  fondness  for 
games  and  sports,  trundled  his  hoop  barefooted  all 
over  Newburyport,  swam  the  Merrimac  in  summer 
and  skated  on  it  in  winter,  was  good  at  sculling  a 
boat,  was  expert  at  marbles,  played  at  bat  and  ball 
and  snowball,  and  sometimes  led  the  South-end  boys 
in  their  battles  with  the  North-enders.  He  swam 
three-quarters  of  a  mile  across  the  river  and  swam 
back  again  against  the  tide,  and  in  winter  once 
nearly  lost  his  life  by  breaking  through  the  ice.  He 
caught  a  seaport  boy's  fancy  for  going  to  sea,  but 
the  infection  took  little  hold,  and  he  was  afterward 
thoroughly  cured  of  it  by  sea-sickness.  Like  his 
mother,  he  was  fond  of  music,  had  a  rich  voice,  and 
joined  the  choir  of  the  Baptist  church.  There  was 
no  sign  of  anything  eccentric  about  him  as  a  boy, 
unless  it  were  his  restlessness  in  the  service  of  Dea 
con  Bartlett.  His  fondness  for  pet  animals  showed 
a  tender  disposition.  It  is  evident  from  his  corre 
spondence  with  his  mother  that  he  was  a  loving  and 

dutiful  son.     In  after-years  he  said  that  he  felt  like 

(8) 


a  little  boy  when  he  thought  of  his  mother,  and 
always  spoke  of  her  memory  with  passionate  affec 
tion. 

The  mother's  health  and  strength  were  beginning 
to  fail.  It  was  necessary  that  Lloyd  should  earn 
his  bread,  and  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  shoemaker. 
He  was  only  nine  years  old,  and  so  small  that  he 
seemed  hardly  biggor  than  a  last.  The  work  was 
too  heavy  for  him,  and  he  always  remembered  with 
horror  the  heavy  lapstone  and  his  fingers  sore  with 
sewing,  though  he  also  remembered  the  goodness 
of  his  Quaker  master,  Oliver,  and  his  wife. 

In  1815  Mr.  Paul  Newhall,  a  shoe  manufacturer 
of  Lynn,  removing  with  his  staff  of  workmen  to 
Baltimore,  took  Mrs.  Garrison  and  her  two  boys 
with  him.  At  Baltimore  James,  the  elder  boy,  was 
apprenticed  at  shoemaking,  while  Lloyd  ran  errands. 
Mr.  Newhall's  factory  failed,  and  Mrs.  Garrison  had 
to  take  to  monthly  nursing  again.  She  was  not 
only  religious,  but  a  missionary,  evangelized  the 
workmen  and  set  up  a  prayer-meeting  for  women. 
She  had  need  of  such  support  as  religion  could  give 
her,  for,  besides  the  failure  of  her  health,  troubles 
came  upon  her.  Her  eldest  boy,  James,  ran  away 
to  sea,  where  his  career  was  wretched  and  degraded. 
Its  close  forms  a  tragic  but  honorable  episode  in 
Lloyd  Garrison's  life.  Lloyd,  his  mother  says,  is 
a  fine  boy,  a  church-goer,  and  likely  to  be  a  com- 


plete  Baptist.  But  lie  was  unhappy  at  Baltimore 
and  yearned  for  Newburyport.  To  Newburyport 
his  mother  sent  him  for  a  year,  hoping  at  the  end 
of  that  time  to  find  a  place  for  him  again  at  Balti 
more.  In  this  she  failed,  and  she  had  to  resign 
herself  to  his  prolonged  absence  from  her  side,  which 
she  did  in  a  pious  and  touching  letter. 

Lloyd  was  apprenticed  to  Moses  Short,  a  cabinet 
maker  at  Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  who  treated 
him  with  kindness,  and  whose  trade  he  did  not  dis 
like.  But  he  still  yearned  for  Newburyport,  and  ran 
away  from  his  master.  The  master,  however,  being 
good-natured,  and  seeing  his  homesickness,  freely 
let  him  go  back  to  Newburyport  and  Deacon  Bart- 
lett.  Kepeated  efforts  were  made  to  find  a  place 
for  him,  but  in  vain,  till  Mr.  Ephraim  W.  Allen, 
proprietor  of  the  Newburyport  Herald,  wanting  a 
boy  to  learn  the  printer's  trade,  took  him  as  an  ap 
prentice.  This  was  in  1818,  when  he  was  thirteen 
years  old.  His  foot  was  now  on  the  lowest  step  of 
the  right  ladder.  He  took  to  the  work  at  once,  be 
came  very  skilful  in  handling  type,  and  felt  pleasure 
in  it  through  life.  Mr.  Allen's  house  was  near 
Deacon  Bartlett's,  and  the  boy  was  happy  in  his 
new  home.  Mr.  Allen,  writing  to  Mrs.  Garrison, 
says  he  never  had  a  better  boy.  This  she  repeats  in 
a  letter  to  Lloyd  declining  some  Balsam  of  Quito, 

probably  a  quack  medicine,  which  he  had  offered  to 

(10) 


send  her,  and  saying  that  she  wishes  for  nothing 
more  than  the  Balm  of  Gilead,  which  heals  souls. 
Mrs.  Garrison's  life  was  near  its  close.  Her  letters 
henceforth  chronicle  the  inroadk  of  her  malady. 
That  she  wras  leaving  her  children  alone  and  unpro 
vided  for,  was  to  her  the  sting  of  death.  "  Thank 
God,"  she  wrote  to  Lloyd,  "I  am  WT  ell  taken  care  of , 
for  both  black  and  White  are  all  attention  to  me, 
and  I  have  everything  done  that  is  necessary.  The 
ladies  are  all  kind  to  me,  and  I  have  a  colored 
woman  that  waits  on  me,  that  is  so  kind  no  one  can 
tell  how  kind  she  is,  and  although  a  slave  to  man, 
yet  a  free-born  soul,  by  the  grace  of  God.  Her 
name  is  Henny,  and  should  I  never  see  you  again, 
and  you  should  ever  come  where  she  is,  remember 
her  for  your  poor  mother's  sake."  She  contrasts 
the  bright  morning  of  her  life  with  its  sad  close, 
and  turns  from  the  deceptive  dreams  of  earthly  hap 
piness  to  what  she  deems  the  happy  realities  of  re 
ligion.  She  was  too  poor  to  send  Lloyd  as  many 
letters  as  he  would  have  wished,  the  postage  being 
twenty-five  cents.  But  she  managed  in  her  inter 
vals  of  convalescence  to  get  together  for  him  a  trunk  - 
ful  of  clothes,  which  she  sent  him  as  the  last  token 
of  her  love.  Before  her  death,  in  1823,  he  went  to 
Baltimore  and  saw  her  once  more. 

Lloyd  wras  getting  on  well  with  his  trade,  and 

became  so  expert  that  he  was  made  foreman  of  the 

(11) 


office.  As  a  compositor,  his  rapidity  and  accuracy 
were  first-rate.  Among  the  journeymen  in  his  office 
was  Tobias  Miller,  afterward  a  clergyman  and  city 
missionary,  lovable  in  character,  sensible  and  racy 
in  speech,  from  working  by  whose  side  he  believed 
himself  to  have  gained  much.  Not  that  Tobias 
Miller's  wisdom  seems  to  have  been  recondite. 
"Patience  and  perseverance!"  "  'Tisn't  as  bad  as 
it  would  be  if  it  were  worse!"  "Never  mind! 
'Twill  be  all  the  same  a  thousand  years  hence  " — 
were  the  utterances  of  his  philosophy  when  a  des 
perate  proof  came  for  correction  at  midnight  or  a 
form  was  "pied."  Garrison,  however,  found  com 
fort  in  them  amid  the  trials  of  his  after-years. 
Probably  it  was  the  image  of  Mr.  Miller's  placid 
resignation,  enhanced  by  the  sensitiveness  of  his 
temperament,  rather  than  his  maxims,  that  con 
soled. 

A  young  printer  was  pretty  sure  to  take  to  writ 
ing  if  he  had  any  gifts  and  tendencies  that  way. 
Garrison  had  a  strong  taste  for  poetry  and  romance, 
while  for  poetry  he  seems  to  have  had  himself  no 
mean  gift  had  his  stormy  life  permitted  the  regular 
cultivation  of  it.  His  favorite  poets  were  Byron, 
Moore,  Pope,  Campbell,  and  Scott,  and  the  imma 
turity  of  his  taste  might  excuse  him  if  he  loved  Mrs. 
Hemans  above  them  all.  He  took  a  healthy  delight 
in  the  Waverley  Novels.  An  American  in  a  vortex 


of  party  politics  could  not  fail  to  be  a  politician. 
Garrison  in  his  teens  was  an  ardent  Federalist  and 
wielded  his  chivalrous  pen  in  defence  of  the  heroes 
of  that  party  when  fortune  had  left  it  stranded. 
But  his  first  literary  essay  was  a  communication  to 
the  Herald,  signed  "An  Old  Bachelor,"  on  a  verdict 
in  a  breach  of  promise  case  which  had  excited  his 
indignation.  The  paper  would  not  be  received  with 
applause  by  a  Woman's  Eights  Association,  nor 
would  it  have  chimed  in  happily  with  Garrison's 
own  writings  and  speeches  in  after-days  when  he 
was  pleading  for  the  admission  of  women  to  the 
platform  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Association.  "Wom 
en,1'  he  said,  "in  this  country  are  too  much  idol 
ized  and  flattered ;  therefore  they  are  puffed  up  and 
inflated  with  pride  and  self-conceit.  They  make 
the  men  crawl,  beseech,  and  supplicate,  wait  upon 
and  do  every  manual  service  for  them  to  gain  their 
favor  and  approbation :  they  (the  men)  are,  in  fact, 
completely  subservient  to  every  whim  and  caprice 
of  these  changeable  mortals."  "Women  generally 
feel  their  importance,"  he  continued,  "and  they  use 
it  without  mercy."  This  communication  was  ac 
cepted,  and  so  were  others,  including  an  account  of 
a  shipwreck— fabricated,  we  are  told,  by  the  fancy 
of  one  glaringly  ignorant  of  the  sea.  The  editor 
paid  his  gifted  correspondent  the  compliment  of 

desiring  an  interview,  but  Garrison  kept  his  secret 

(13) 


from  all  but  his  mother,  who  received  the  confidence 
with  mingled  pride  and  misgiving.  In  a  subsequent 
letter  she  warns  him  of  the  garret,  which  is  the  com 
mon  lot  of  authors,  and  thinks  that  he  would  have 
been  better  employed  if,  instead  of  writing  political 
pieces,  he  had  been  searching  the  Scriptures  for  the 
truth. 

Garrison  wrote  two  articles  on  South  American 
affairs,  in  which,  touching  on  the  outrages  commit 
ted  by  the  young  republics  on  vessels  belonging  to 
the  United  States  after  the  sympathy  shown  their 
cause  by  that  power,  the  future  apostle  of  moral 
force  and  denouncer  of  all  war  recommends  finish 
ing  the  controversy  with  cannon,  while  the  destined 
leader  of  the  crusade  against  slavery  glorifies  with 
out  reserve  American  freedom,  and  shares  the 
columns  of  the  Herald  with  Caleb  Gushing,  who 
maintained  that  slave-owning  was  not  at  variance 
with  republicanism  because  the  sight  of  men  de 
prived  of  freedom  made  others  prize  it  more.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  had  discernment  enough  to  de 
predate  the  election  of  Jackson.  Like  an  orthodox 
republican,  he  denounced  the  Holy  Alliance  and 
declaimed  upon  the  wrongs  of  Poland.  He  also 
duly  caught  the  Greek  fever,  and  thought  of  going 
to  fight  for  Greece.  His  writing  was  mature  and, 
for  the  purposes  of  a  journalist,  good.  At  twenty 

he  seemed  cut  out  for  success  as  an  editor.     He  was 

(14) 


good-looking  and  well  dressed.  His  portrait  pre 
sents  him  with  a  smooth  face,  abundance  of  black 
hair,  and  a  ruffled  shirt.  He  was  a  favorite  with 
the  ladies.  He  was  healthy,  social,  mercurial,  am 
bitious,  filled  with  hope  by  the  acceptance  of  his 
writing.  Nobody  would  have  seen  on  his  head  a 
social  crown  of  thorns.  He  had  an  excellent  con 
stitution,  and  was  able  to  say  toward  the  close  of 
life  that,  though  he  had  lived  on  all  kinds  of  food, 
he  had  never  known  that  he  had  a  stomach ;  so  that 
the  reformer  in  his  case  was  not  the  dyspeptic.  To 
add  to  his  chances  of  success  in  a  respectable  career 
he  was,  as  his  mother  had  foretold,  a  "complete 
Baptist,"  a  strict  church-goer,  a  stanch  supporter 
of  the  clergy,  and  an  uncritical  believer  in  the  Bible. 
The  twenty-first  year  of  his  age  (1826)  in  fact 
saw  him  editor  and  proprietor  of  a  paper.  The 
Herald  passed  under  a  changed  name  from  tke 
hands  of  Mr.  Allen  into  those  of  Isaac  Knapp,  and 
from  his  into  those  of  Garrison,  who  rechristened 
it  the  Free  Press,  Mr.  Allen  showing  his  confidence 
in  his  apprentice  by  advancing  money.  The  motto 
of  the  Free  Press,  "Our  Country,  Our  Whole 
Country,  and  Nothing  but  Our  Country,"  gives 
little  indication  of  a  future  career  of  disloyalty  to 
the  Union  and  loyalty  to  Humanity.  The  journal 
also  copied  without  comment  the  words  of  the 
ineffable  Edward  Everett,  once  a  Massachusetts 

(15) 


clergyman,  who  had  not  only  quoted  the  New  Tes 
tament  in  support  of  slavery,  but  declared  that 
there  was  no  cause  in  which  he  would  sooner  buckle 
a  knapsack  on  his  back  and  put  a  musket  to  his 
shoulder  than  the  suppression  of  a  slave  insurrec 
tion  at  the  South.  The  Free  Press  did  indeed  speak 
of  slavery  as  a  curse,  and  a  theme  to  dwell  upon  till 
the  country  was  rid  of  it;  but  this  was  a  passing 
remark,  and  there  was  nothing  to  show  that  the  edi 
tor's  thoughts  were  turned  in  that  particular  direc 
tion.  The  Free  Press  had  the  good  luck  to  bring 
out  as  a  poet  Whit  tier,  then  a  Quaker  lad  working 
as  a  shoemaker  with  hammer  and  lapstone  at  East 
Haverhill.  Little  did  the  editor  dream  that  he  was 
opening  the  gate  of  fame  to  the  poetic  champion  of 
what  was  to  be  his  own  great  cause.  The  paper 
seems  to  have  done  fairly  well,  but  it  lost  party 
subscribers  by  taking  an  independent  line,  and  Gar 
rison,  probably  seeing  that  no  more  was  likely  to  be 
made  of  it,  sold  it  to  Mr.  John  H.  Harris,  who  at 
once  put  it  on  the  opposite  tack. 

Descending  again  from  the  dignity  of  editorship 
to  the  level  of  the  journeyman  printer,  Garrison 
went  to  Boston  in  quest  of  employment.  He  wras 
some  time  in  finding  it.  Meanwhile  he  gratified 
his  taste  for  politics  by  attending  a  caucus,  and 
proposing  a  candidate  in  opposition  to  the  nomina 
tion  of  the  leaders.  He  broke  down  in  his  speech 

(16) 


and  was  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  the  manu 
script  in  his  hat.  There  ensued  a  newspaper 
tournament,  in  which,  being  rebuked  for  his  pre 
sumption,  he  defended  himself  with  force  and 
sprightliness  against  a  sneer  at  his  youth. 

"I  leave  it,"  he  said,  "to  metaphysicians  to  deter 
mine  the  precise  moment  when  wisdom  and  ex 
perience  leap  into  existence — when  for  the  first  time 
the  mind  distinguishes  truth  from  error,  selfishness 
from  patriotism,  and  passion  from  reason.  It  is 
sufficient  for  me  that  I  am  understood."  In  the 
end  he  formed  a  connection  with  Mr.  Collier,  a  Bap 
tist  city  missionary,  the  founder  of  the  first  temper 
ance  journal.  Of  that  journal,  of  which  the  name 
was  the  National  Philanthropist,  and  the  pro 
claimed  object  "the  suppression  of  intemperance 
and  its  kindred  vices,"  Garrison  was  made  editor. 
In  those  days  drinking  was  terribly  rife,  and  after 
the  part  it  had  played  in  Garrison's  family  misfort 
unes,  his  heart  in  fighting  against  it  would  be  with 
his  pen.  Other  reforms,  such  as  the  better  keeping 
of  the  Sabbath,  were  combined  with  temperance. 
The  Philanthropist,  if  we  may  believe  its  editor, 
was  successful  in  improving  public  sentiment  and 
giving  birth  to  reforming  effort,  but  it  was  never 
self-supporting.  It  was  not  likely  that  a  paper 
avowedly  set  up  to  plead  a  particular  cause,  would 

interest   the  world  in  general  enough  to  make  it  a 

(17) 


commercial  success.  Indeed,  even  for  the  advocacy 
of  a  particular  cause,  it  is  better  first  to  build  your 
pulpit,  and  then  to  preach  from  it.  When  a  journal 
has  obtained  a  hold,  by  its  general  merits,  on  a 
large  circle  of  readers,  it  may  press  its  views  on  any 
special  question  with  effect.  In  the  second  number 
of  his  paper  Garrison  had  commented  on  the  bill 
passed  by  the  House  of  Assembly  of  South  Carolina, 
to  forbid  the  teaching  of  blacks  to  read  and  write. 
"There  is,  "he  said,  "  something  unspeakably  piti 
able  and  alarming  in  the  state  of  that  society  where 
it  is  deemed  necessary  for  self-preservation  to  seal 
up  the  mind  and  the  intellect  of  man  to  brutal  in 
capacity.  We  shall  not  now  consider  the  policy  of 
this  resolve,  but  it  illustrates  the  terrors  of  slavery 
in  a  manner  as  eloquent  and  affecting  as  imagina 
tion  can  conceive.  .  .  .  Truly  the  alternatives  of 
oppression  are  terrible.  But  this  state  of  things 
cannot  always  last,  nor  ignorance  alone  shield  us 
from  destruction."  These  words,  written  in  1828, 
ring  up  the  curtain  of  a  new  scene  in  the  drama  of 
Garrison's  life.  They  heralded  the  arrival  of  Ben 
jamin  Lundy  at  Boston.  There  was  a  happy  con 
junction  of  two  bright  though  small  stars  in  the 

firmament  of  humanity. 

(18) 


n. 


GARRISON  had  his  precursors.  Elihu  Embree, 
the  Quaker  publisher -of  the  first  journal  devoted  to 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  was  one  of  them.  But  the 
chief  was  Benjamin  Lundy,  also  a  Quaker,  and  a 
true  and  admirable  though  most  humble  servant  of 
humanity.  Lundy  having  lived  at  Wheeling,  Vir 
ginia,  had  seen  the  coffles  of  negroes  in  chains  go 
by  on  their  way  to  the  South.  He  was  a  saddler, 
prosperous  in  his  trade,  and  made  what  for  him  was 
wealth,  but  gave  it  all  up  to  his  cause.  He  fought 
with  the  pen  in  different  journals  against  the  at 
tempt  to  force  Missouri  into  the  Union  as  a  Slave 
State.  Then  he  set  up  at  Mount  Pleasant,  in  Ohio, 
a  journal  of  his  own  called  the  Genius  of  Universal 
Emancipation.  It  was  brought  out  without  a  dol 
lar  of  capital  and  with  only  six  subscribers,  and  for 
a  time  he  walked  a  distance  of  twenty  miles  each 
month  to  Steubenville  to  get  the  journal  printed, 
and  returned  with  the  edition  on  his  back.  He 
afterward  moved  with  his  journal  to  Tennessee, 
and  at  last  to  Baltimore,  whither  he  trudged  with 

his  knapsack  on  his  back,  passing  through  south- 
do  ) 


L 


western  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  and  sowing 
the  seeds  of  his  doctrine  by  lecturing  as  he  went.  He 
would  seem  to  have  been  able  to  carry  gunpowder 
in  a  furnace ;  but  he  was  very  gentle ;  his  doctrine 
was  gradual  emancipation,  and  his  policy  was  col<> 
nization,  which  was  accepted  at  the  South.  In  the 
interest  of  that  policy  he  visited  Hayti.  He  was 
feeble  in  frame,  somewhat  deaf,  and  a  bad  lecturer, 
having  a  weak  voice,  so  that  his  efforts  must  have 
been  painful,  and  his  motive  cannot  have  been  the 
love  of  platform  excitement  or  of  self -display.  At 
Baltimore  he  continued  to  publish  the  Genius  of 
Universal  Emancipation,  going  about  to  lecture 
and  form  associations  at  the  same  time.  Baltimore 
was  a  port  of  the  domestic  slave  trade,  with  a  tur 
bulent  and  violent  mob.  Lundy's  mildness  did  not 
save  him  from  a  brutal  assault  by  a  slave-trading 
ruffian.  It  was  after  this  that  he  came  to  Boston, 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Garrison,  and,  by  plead 
ing  the  cause  to  him,  fired  a  heart  which  was  ready 
enough  to  catch  the  flame.  It  appears  that  Garri 
son's  heart  was  fired  all  the  more  easily  from  seeing 
the  coldness  of  the  clergymen  to  whom  Lundy  ap 
pealed  in  vain,  for  he  cries  out  upon  "the  moral 
cowardice,  the  chilling  apathy,  the  criminal  unbe 
lief,  the  cruel  scepticism,  that  were  revealed  on  that 
memorable  occasion."  Everybody  in  the  room  was 

against  slavery,  but,  then,  the  formation  of  a  soci- 

(20) 


ety  at  Boston  would  enrage  and  alarm  the  South.  I 
"Perhaps  a  select  committee  might  he  formed  under/ 
an  inoffensive  name."     Lundy,  however,  was  en 
couraged  enough  to  revisit  Boston,  where  (August! 
7,   1828)    he   held   a   meeting   in   the   vestry  of   a; 
Baptist  church,  at  which  he  discredited  deportation 
as  a  remedy,  pointing  out  that  the  increase  in  the 
number  of  blacks  at  the  South  in  a  year  was  greater 
than  the  Colonization  Society  could  handle  in  half 
a  century.     The  meeting  was  brought  to  an  abrupt 
termination  by  the  pastor  of  the  church,  who  rose 
and    personally   denounced   the   agitation    against 
slavery  as  offensive  to  the  South  and  dangerous, 
affirming  that  the   States  were  gradually  getting 
rid  of  slavery  by  selling  their  slaves  to  those  fur 
ther  south.     A  committee  of  twenty,  however,  was 
formed,  and  Garrison  was  one. 

In  the  great  Presidential  campaign  of  1828  Gar 
rison,  having  made  his  mark  as  a  writer,  was 
invited  by  a  committee  of  prominent  citizens  at 
Bennington,  Vermont,  to  come  and  edit  a  new 
paper  there  in  advocacy  of  the  re-election  of  John 
Quincy  Adams  against  Andrew  Jackson.  The 
Journal  of  the  Times  was  the  name  of  the  paper. 
Its  motto  was  Garrison's  favorite  quotation  from 
Cicero,  "Reason  shall  prevail  with  us  more  than 
Popular  Opinion."  Though  set  up  for  a  political 
campaign,  the  Journal  of  the  Times  declared  itself 

(21) 


independent  of  party.  Independent  of  everything 
but  public  morality  and  constitutional  government  it 
might  be  in  opposing  the  dictatorship  of  Jackson. 
But  it  further  declared  that  its  editor  had  three 
objects  in  view,  which  he  would  pursue  through 
life — the  suppression  of  intemperance  and  its  asso 
ciate  vices,  the  gradual  emancipation  of  every  slave 
in  the  Republic,  and  a  perpetuity  of  national  peace. 
It  will  be  noted  that  gradual  emancipation  was  still_ 
the  mark  and  limit  of  his  aims.  He  also  avowed 
himself  a  friend,  even  the  enthusiast,  of  what  he 
styled  the  American  system  of  fostering  the  growth 
of  native  industry  by  a  protective  tariff.  The  crea 
tion  of  national  centres  of  industry  seemed  to  him 
to  be  proved  by  daily  experience  to  be  the  best  mode 
of  promoting  the  welfare  of  the  people,  and  the 
great  secret  of  national  aggrandizement.  It  may 
safely  be  said  that  he  had  not  studied  the  question 
deeply  in  any  of  its  aspects.  If  he  had,  he  might 
have  doubted  whether  by  breaking  up  the  commer 
cial  union  of  nations  he  would  be  hastening  the 
advent  of  the  kingdom  of  peace,  which  was  one  of 
his  three  aspirations,  and  even  whether  the  shack 
ling  of  industry  which  the  protective  system  entails 
was  consistent  with  universal  emancipation.  We 
shall  see  a  notable  change  in  his  sentiments  on  this 
subject  hereafter. 

From  its  first  number  the  Journal  of  the  Times 

(22) 


showed  the  effect  of  its'  editor's  intercourse  with 
Lundy  hy  the  clearness  and  vehemence  of  its  utter 
ances  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  though  what  Gar 
rison's  biographers  call  the  scales  of  Colonization 
had  not  yet  fallen  from  the  editor's  eyes.  "For 
ourselves,"  it  said,  "we  are  resolved  to  agitate  this 
subject  to  the  utmost ;  nothing  but  death  shall  pre 
vent  us  from  denouncing  a  crime  which  has  no 
parallel  in  human  depravity;  we  shall  take  high 
ground."  With  literal  truth  it  could  aver  that  the 
manacled  slave  was  driven  to  market  past  the  door 
of  the  Capitol,  in  which  sat  the  representatives  of 
that  morning  star  of  freedom,  the  American  Ee- 
public.  Over  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia 
Congress  had  power ;  this  was  accordingly  the  point 
in  the  enemy's  lines  most  open  to  at  tack.  Garrison 
had  the  honor  of  transmitting  to  Congress  a  petition 
got  up  by  himself  and  signed  by  2,352  citizens  of 
Vermont,  in  favor  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District.  The  petition  was  referred  to  a  committee, 
the  report  of  which  embodied  the  politicians'  view 
of  the  subject.  Agitation,  the  committee  held, 
would  tend  to  create  insubordination  and  restless 
ness  among  the  slaves,  "who  would  otherwise  be 
comparatively  happy  and  contented. "  Emancipation 
in  the  District  would  spread  disturbance  through 
the  Slave  States.  It  would  deprive  the  inhabitants 

of  property  which  they  had  enjoyed  under  the  laws 

(23) 


of  Virginia  and  Maryland.  As  to  the  traffic,  it  was 
doing  good  by  gradually  carrying  the  negroes 
further  South,  "and  although  violence  might  some 
times  be  done  to  their  feelings  in  the  separation  of 
families,  yet  it  should  be  some  consolation  to  those 
whose  feelings  were  interested  in  their  behalf  to 
know  that  their  condition  was  more  frequently  bet 
tered  and  their  minds  made  happier  by  the  ex 
change!"  Garrison  branded  the  report  as  "the 
worst  apology  for  the  most  relentless  tyranny."  It 
was  a  pity  that  George  III.  and  Grenville,  still  more, 
that  Burke,  had  not  lived  to  read  it.  One  month 
later,  Andrew  Jackson,  entering  Washington  by 
storm,  with  violence  and  the  spoils  system  in  his 
train,  put  Congress,  liberty,  and  everything  that 
could  tend  to  emancipation  under  his  feet.  Slave- 
hunting  on  Northern  soil  under  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  went  on  merrily.  "When  the  country  was 
convulsed  by  the  anti-Masonic  excitement  conse 
quent  on  the  disappearance  of  Morgan,  Garrison 
drew  a  telling  contrast  between  the  commotion 
caused  by  the  abduction  of  one  man  and  the  total 
absence  of  any  feeling  for  the  two  millions  who 
were  groaning  out  their  lives  in  bondage.  He  was 
happy  at  Bennington,  felt  his  powers,  liked  the  Ver- 
monters,  and  found  their  climate  the  best  in  the 
world. 

At  Bennington,  however,  he  did  not  long  remain. 
(24) 


Lundy,  who  had  been  watching  his  course,  seeing 
that  he  had  now  thoroughly  given  himself  to  the  \ 
cause,  resolved  to  invite  him  to  Baltimore,  and 
walked  from  Baltimore  to  Bennington  for  the  pur 
pose.  He  proposed  that  the  Genius  of  Universal 
Emancipation  should  be  changed  from  a  monthly 
to  a  weekly  paper,  and  that  the  younger  partner 
should  edit  it,  while,  the  elder  travelled  to  get  sub 
scriptions.  Garrison  accepted  the  invitation  and 
published  his  valedictory  as  editor  of  the  Journal 
of  the  Times,  announcing  his  devotion  of  himself 
to  the  anti-slavery  cause,  and  proclaiming  once 
more  that  "Keason  had  prevailed  with  him  more 
than  Popular  Opinion. "  The  rival  editor  exulted  in  V 
his  departure,  and  published  a  letter  describing 
him  as  an  egotistical  dandy,  with  a  pair  of  silver - 
mounted  spectacles  riding  elegantly  across  his  nose 
and  displaying  "  the  pert  loquacity  of  a  blue- jay. " 
Such  did  he  look  when  seen  from  a  hostile  point  of 
view.  The  enemy,  however,  was  constrained  to 
admit  Garrison's  talents,  integrity,  and  patriotism. 
After  leaving  Bennington  (1829)  Garrison  stayed 
a  while  at  Boston  waiting  for  the  return  of  Lundy, 
who  had  gone  with  twelve  emancipated  slaves  to 
Hayti,  where  surely  he  can  have  seen  little  to  cheer 
him.  Meantime  Garrison  was  invited  to  address 
the  Congregational  Societies  of  Boston  on  the  Fourth 
of  July.  It  seems  that  Boston  conservatism  was 

(25) 


already  on  the  alert,  for  Garrison  was  subjected  to 
the  annoyance  of  being  sued  for  $4  fine  by  the  clerk 
of  a  militia  company  for  failure  of  appearance  at 
muster,  and  was  obliged  to  betray  the  barrenness  of 
moral  journalism  as  a  trade  by  borrowing  the  petty 
sum  of  a  friend.  The  theme  of  his  address,  "  Dan 
gers  to  the  Nation,"  was  likely  to  awaken  the  sus 
picions  of  the  enemy.  He  said  that  his  knees 
knocked  together  at  the  thought  of  speaking  before 
such  a  concourse.  But  he  had  made  up  his  mind 
that  the  address  should  be  severe  and  sombre.  Se 
vere  and  sombre  it  was.  In  opposition  to  the  vulgar 
Fourth  of  July  patriotism,  "covering  only  its  native 
territory,  blustering  only  for  its  own  rights,  spurn 
ing  moral  restraint,  and  tyrannizing  where  it  could 
with  impunity,"  he  took  his  stand  on  the  patriotism 
which  is  larger  than  a  continent.  Of  slavery  and  of 
the  duty  of  getting  rid  of  it  he  spoke  in  the  boldest 
strain.  It  ought,  he  said,  to  make  the  Fourth  of 
July  a  day  not  of  boisterous  merriment  and  idle 
pageantry,  but  of  fasting  and  prayer ;  not  of  joy, 
but  of  lamentation.  It  ought  to  spike  every  cannon, 
to  haul  down  every  banner,  to  clothe  the  people  in 
sackcloth,  to  bow  down  their  heads  in  the  dust. 

Pitiful  was  the  list  of  grievances  which  the  Dec 
laration  of  Independence,  read  on  that  day,  set 
forth  against  British  tyranny,  compared  with  the 
grievances  of  the  American  slave.  The  orator  was 

(26) 


sick,  he  said,  of  unmeaning  declamation  in  praise 
of  liberty  and  equality,  of  hypocritical  cant  about 
the  inalienable  rights  of  man.  He  could  never  stand 
before  an  assembly  of  Europeans  denouncing  kingly 
government  and  boasting  of  his  American  citizen 
ship,  for,  if  he  did,  the  recollection  of  his  country's 
barbarity  would  blister  his  lips  and  make  his  cheeks 
burn  with  shame.  -To  freeze  the  blood  of  the  au 
dience  by  depicting  the  cruelties  of  slavery  was 
needless ;  the  one  thing  needful  was  to  point  out  the 
path  of  duty.  There  were  four  things,  the  orator 
averred,  which  could  not  be  gainsaid :  the  claim  of 
the  slaves  to  sympathy  and  redress ;  the  responsibil 
ity  of  the  Free  States  for  the  existence  of  slavery 
under  the  national  compact,  and  their  consequent 
right  of  remonstrance  and  abatement ;  that  no  jus 
tification  of  slavery  could  be  found  in  the  condition 
of  its  victims ;  that  the  blacks  were  capable  of  being 
raised  by  freedom  and  education  to  the  level  of  the 
whites.  To  expect  to  succeed  without  collision  or 
without  a  struggle  with  the  worst  passions  was 
hopeless ;  but  the  orator  was  sanguine  enough  to  be 
lieve  that  these  could  be  easily  conquered  by  meek 
ness,  perseverance,  and  prayer.  Toward  the  close, 
however,  the  address  somewhat  halts,  as  its  author 
would  himself  have  said  at  an  after-day.  It  admits 
the  danger  of  liberating  all  at  once  the  present 
race  of  blacks.  This,  it  says,  is  out  of  the  question ; 

(27) 


the  fabric  must  be  reduced  brick  by  brick  till  it  is 
brought  so  low  that  it  may  be  overturned  without 
burying  the  nation  in  its  ruins.  Then  the  orator 
rises  again  to  an  apocalyptic  pitch  of  denunciation, 
predicting,  as  the  penalty  of  persistence  in  national 
sin,  horrors  worse  than  those  of  St.  Domingo. 

The  Boston  American  Traveller  had  a  notice  of 
the  discourse,  describing  the  orator  as  quite  a  youth 
in  appearance,  dressed  in  black,  with  a  bare  neck, 
and  a  broad  linen  collar  spread  out  over  that  of  his 
coat.  His  utterance  at  first  was  feeble,  but  he  be 
came  impressive  as  he  went  on.  He  was,  of  course, 
accused  of  slandering  his  country  and  blaspheming 
the  Declaration  of  Independence. 

Garrison's  Fourth  of  July  address  set  his  own 
mind  actively  at  work,  and  after  a  few  weeks  of 
reflection  he  decisively  arrived  at  the  momentous 
conclusion  which  shaped  his  whole  subsequent 
course,  that  immediate  emancipation,  instead  of 
being  a  dream,  was  the  only  solid  ground  upon 
which  the  moral  and  religious  reformer  could  take 
his  stand.  If  slavery  was  not  merely  a  social, 
political,  and  economical  error,  but  a  wrong  and  a 
sin,  persistence  in  holding  a  man  as  property  even 
for  a  day  must  be  wrongful  and  sinful.  If  the 
slave  had  a  right  to  his  freedom,  he  had  a  right  to 
it  that  very  hour.  Emancipation  immediate  and 
unconditional  was  henceforth  the  lodestar  of  Garri- 

(28) 


son's  life.  Wendell  Phillips  is  rapt  with  admiration 
of  this  boy,  who  saw  what  sages  did  not  see,  that 
morality  alone  would  compel  submission,  and  that 
the  right  policy  was  the  absolute  and  unqualified 
avowal  of  the  uttermost  truth.  It  is  needless  to 
say  that  the  unqualified  avowal  of  the  absolute  and 
the  uttermost  was  the  thing  congenial  to  Wendell 
Phillips'  own  soul.  -Certain  it  is  that  while  others  i 
made  up  issues  of  different  kinds,  constitutional, 
social,  and  economical,  the  moral  issue  was  made  up 
by  Calhoun,  who  maintained  that  slavery  was  en 
tirely  right,  and  Garrison,  who  maintained  that  it  I 

was  utterly  and  intolerably  wrong. 

(29) 


m. 


THE  doctrine  of  immediate  and  unconditional 
emancipation  had  been  already  embraced  by  Garri 
son  when,  Lundy  having  returned  from  Hayti,  the 
two  men  met  at  Baltimore  to  settle  their  partner 
ship  in  the  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation. 
But  Lundy,  always  mild,  was  not  prepared  to  em 
brace  it.  How,  then,  was  their  partnership  to  be 
arranged?  Lundy  proposed  that  each  put  his  in 
itials  to  his  own  articles,  and  that  neither  should 
be  responsible  for  what  the  other  said.  This  pro 
posal  was  accepted,  and  the  Genius  of  Universal 
Emancipation  had  two  voices.  But  one  of  the  two 
was  far  the  stronger.  Lundy,  in  his  salutatory, 
merely  explained  the  arrangements.  Garrison,  in 
his,  proclaimed  his  sole  reliance  on  the  eternal  prin 
ciples  of  justice  for  the  solution  of  the  slavery  ques 
tion,  and  declared  that  they  pointed  to  immediate 
and  complete  emancipation.  This  bugle  note, 
sounded  loud  and  clear  from  the  first,  could  not  fail 
to  set  the  echoes  flying  in  a  centre  of  the  traffic  like 
Baltimore,  where  slave  auctions  and  the  shipment 
of  slaves  were  constantly  going  on ;  and  every  week 

(30) 


the  Genius  had  a  column  of  slavery  cruelties  and 
horrors,  to  which  Baltimore  itself  contributed  its 
quota.  In  the  first  month  of  their  partnership,  the 
two  reformers  received  a  visit  one  Sunday  from  a 
slave  who  had  just  been  whipped  with  a  cowhide, 
and  on  whose  bleeding  back  they  counted  twenty- 
seven  terrible  gashes,  while  his  head  was  much 
bruised.  His  only  fault  was  that  he  had  not  loaded 
a  wagon  to  suit  the  overseer.  He  was  at  the  time 
on  the  point  of  receiving  his  freedom.  Expostula 
tion  was  met  with  contempt  and  abuse.  A  few  days 
later,  Garrison  heard  in  a  house  which  he  passed 
the  sound  of  the  whip  and  cries  of  anguish,  and 
this,  he  notes,  was  nothing  uncommon. 

His  first  encounter  was  with  the  brutal  slave- 
trader  who  had  assaulted  Lundy.  The  man's 
advertisements  were  refused  on  account  of  his  no 
torious  cruelty,  even  by  journals  which  published 
advertisements  of  other  slave  auctions.  Garrison 
exposed  him  in  a  scathing  article.  The  man  ascribed 
the  article  to  Lundy  and  threatened  vengeance. 
Garrison  at  once  avowed  the  authorship,  and  chal 
lenged  the  formidable  ruffian  to  meet  him  at  his 
boarding-house  and  discuss  the  question.  Here  was 
no  want  of  courage.  The  taunt  afterward  freely 
flung  on  Garrison  and  his  comrades,  of  keeping  in 
the  safe  North  and  fearing  to  present  their  doctrines 
in  the  stronghold  of  slavery,  was  practically  refuted 

(31) 


in  advance.  Garrison's  second  and  more  serious 
encounter  was  with  Mr.  Todd,  a  merchant  of  New- 
buryport,  Garrison's  own  town,  who  had  allowed 
his  ship  to  be  freighted  with  slaves  at  Baltimore. 
The  transportation  of  slaves  from  one  State  to  an 
other  was  going  on  at  the  rate  of  fifty  thousand  a 
year.  The  foreign  slave-trade  was  now  piracy; 
why  was  the  domestic  slave-trade  to  be  held  blame 
less?  Todd's  crime  was  doubled  by  his  Puritan 
respectability.  He  was  denounced  in  a  flaming 
editorial.  Thereupon  he  brought  an  action  for  libel. 
On  the  trial  it  appeared  that  the  defendant  had 
gone,  as  writers  of  flaming  editorials  are  apt  to  go, 
somewhat  beyond  the  strict  facts.  He  failed  to 
prove  what  he  had  insinuated — that  Todd  was  in  the 
habit  of  carrying  slaves,  and  owed  a  success  over 
his  rivals  in  trade,  which  otherwise  was  mysterious, 
to  that  unholy  source.  He  failed  to  prove  that  the 
slaves  were  chained,  though  nothing  was  more 
likely  than  that  they  would  be  chained  as  the  coffles 
sent  by  land  usually  were,  while  the  advocate  who 
could  speak  of  them  as  "  passengers  "  must  have  had 
a  front  of  brass.  On  the  other  hand,  the  main  facts 
could  not  be  denied.  The  ship  had  been  freighted 
with  slaves,  more,  even,  in  number  than  Garrison 
had  alleged,  and  this  had  been  done  with  Todd's 
knowledge  and  approval.  Garrison  was  defended 

with  spirit.     But  at  Baltimore   justice  in  slavery 

(32) 


A 
cases  was  not  blind.     Garrison  was  found  guilty  of 

libel,  and  was  condemned  to  pay  a  fine  of  fifty  dollars, 
together  with  fifty  dollars  costs,  or  go  to  jail.  Not 
being  able  to  pay  the  fine,  to  jail  he  went,  and  was 
saluted  on  his  entrance  with  the  customary  jeers  of 
the  jail-birds.  Stone  walls,  however,  did  not  make 
a  prison.  The  jailer  was  kind,  and  the  captive  was 
allowed  to  receive  the,  visits  of  Lundy  and  of  Isaac 
Knapp,  his  old  comrade  of  the  printing-office,  who 
had  come  to  Baltimore  to  work  on  the  Genius.  He 
had  the  free  range  of  the  prison,  was  permitted  to 
talk  to  all  its  inmates  about  their  cases,  and  found 
it  a  good  place  for  sketching  "the  lights  and 
shadows  of  human  nature."  There  were  in  the 
jail  runaway  slaves,  whom  it  was  the  custom  to 
sell  South,  and  slave-traders  came  to  buy  them. 
With  one  of  the  traders,  who  seems  to  have  been  a 
mild  specimen  of  his  class,  Garrison  opened  a  dis 
cussion  by  asking  him  rather  brusquely  what  right 
he  had  to  his  slave.  "My  father  left  him  to  me," 
was  the  innocent  reply.  "Suppose,  sir,  your  father 
had  broken  into  a  bank  and  left  you  the  fruits  of  his 
robbery?"  The  trader  fell  back  on  the  curse  of 
Ham.  Garrison  replied  that  granting — what  re 
mained  to  be  proved — that  the  Africans  were  the 
descendants  of  Ham,  Noah's  curse  was  a  prediction 
of  future  servitude,  not  an  injunction  to  oppress. 

With  perhaps  more  force  he  added,  "Pray,  sir,  is 

(33) 


it  a  careful  desire  to  fulfil  the  Scriptures  or  to  make 
money  that  induces  you  to  hold  yojir  fellow -men 
in  bondage?"  The  trader  asked  him  how  he  would 
like  to  see  a  black  man  President  of  the  United 
States.  He  replied  adroitly,  but  honestly,  that  he 
was  a  loyal  Eepublican,  and  should  bow  to  the 
decision  of  the  people.  The  last  thrust  was,  "How 
should  you  like  to  have  a  black  man  marry  your 
daughter?"  This  was  parried  with,  "I  am  not 
married,  I  have  no  daughter;"  and  the  thrust  was 
returned  with,  "  Sir,  I  am  not  familiar  with  your 
practices;  but  allow  me  to  say  that  slave-holders 
generally  should  be  the  last  persons  to  affect  fastid- 

\iousness  on  that  point,  for  they  seem  to  be  enamoured 
with  amalgamation. " 

Part  of  his  enforced  leisure  the  prisoner  employed 
in  writing  verses,  some  of  which  are  such  as  to  con 
firm  our  belief  that,  had  he  taken  that  line,  he 
would  have  won  at  least  a  fair  measure  of  reputa 
tion  as  a  poet. 

THE    GUILTLESS    PRISONER. 

Prisoner !  within  these  gloomy  walls  close  pent — 

Guiltless  of  Horrid  crime  or  venial  wrong — 
Bear  nobly  up  against  thy  punishment, 

And  in  thy  innocence  be  great  and  strong ! 
Perchance  thy  fault  was  love  to  all  mankind  ; 

Thou  didst  oppose  some  vile,  oppressive  law  ; 
Or  strive  all  human  fetters  to  unbind ; 

Or  would  'st  not  bear  the  implements  of  war  • — 
(34) 


What  then?    Dost  thou  so  soon  repent  the  deed? 

A  martyr's  crown  is  richer  than  a  king's! 
Think  it  an  honor  with  thy  Lord  to  bleed, 

And  glory  'midst  intensest  sufferings ! 
Though  beat — imprisoned — put  to  open  shame — 
Time  shall  embalm  and  magnify  thy  name. 

Allen  of  the  Herald,  Whittier,  and  other  friends 
were  troubled  about  their  friend's  imprisonment, 
more  perhaps  than  he-was  himself.  To  their  letters 
of  sympathy  he  responded  by  contrasting  his  own 
brief  and  comparatively  mild  captivity  with  the 
cruel  and  lifelong  captivity  of  the  slaves;  and  he 
asked,  if  the  oppression  of  a  single  man  excited  so 
much  emotion,  how  much  greater  ought  to  be  the 
emotion  excited  by  the  far  worse  oppression  of  two 
millions?  At  last  Whittier  wrote  to  Henry  Clay, 
whom  Garrison,  not  having  yet  lost  faith  and  in 
terest  in  politicians,  had  warmly  supported  for  the 
Presidency.  Clay  was  minded  to  pay  the  fine; 
but  he  was  forestalled  by  Arthur  Tappan,  a  wealthy 
and  philanthrophic  merchant  of  New  York,  who 
here  comes  on  the  scene  as  a  leading  friend  and 
generous  provider  of  the  sinews  of  war  to  the  anti- 
slavery  cause.  Tappan  sent  a  hundred  dollars,  and 
Garrison,  after  a  captivity  of  forty-nine  days,  was 
set  free.  His  spirit  had  not  for  a  moment  quailed 
under  imprisonment.  He  had  been  not  only  un 
complaining,  but  jocund ;  nor  had  he  betrayed  the 

vanity  which  a  youthful  crusader  would  be  likely 

(35) 


to  betray  by  boasting  of  his  martyrdom.  In  him, 
beneath  a  gentle  and  rather  feminine  exterior,  was 
a  strong  man.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  his  wrath 
turned  more  fiercely  than  ever  against  slave -owners : 
they  were  henceforth  in  his  eyes  kidnappers  and 
man-stealers,  whom  it  was  the  duty  of  every 
Christian  church  to  expel  from  its  communion.  He 
was  still  a  devout  Christian  and  churchman,  and  to 
the  action  of  the  Christian  churches,  above  all  things, 
he  still  looked  for  countenance  and  support  in  the 
championship  of  a  great  moral  cause. 

During  Garrison's  imprisonment  his  partner  had 
been  compelled  to  reduce  their  journal,  which  never 
had  subscriptions  enough  to  float  it,  from  a  weekly 
to  a  monthly,  and  the  partnership  came  to  an  end. 
Garrison  went  back  to  his  own  State,  and  in  1830 
began  lecturing  for  the  cause.  But  he  soon  had  a 
chilling  experience  in  the  quarter  where  he  might 
have  expected  the  warmest  sympathy.  Churches, 
both  at  Newburyport  and  Boston,  were  closed 
against  him :  if  the  pastor  was  willing  to  open  the 
door,  the  trustees,  mindful  of  financial  interests, 
were  not.  At  Boston  it  was  left  for  a  society  of 
avowed  infidels  to  give  the  Christian  lecturer  the 
use  of  a  hall  for  a  cause  in  which  they  had  no  par 
ticular  interest  beyond  their  loyalty  to  freedom  of 
opinion,  and  in  support  of  which  he  appealed  to  the 

Gospel  which  they  rejected.     The  head  of  orthodox 

(36) 


religion  at  Boston,  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher,  was  present 
at  the  lecture,  but  gave  no  sign.  Afterward  he 
excused  himself  on  the  ground  that  he  had  too 
many  irons  in  the  fire,  telling  Garrison  at  the  same 
time  if  he  would  give  up  his  fanatical  notions  and  j , 

be   guided   by  the   clergy,  they  would   make  him 

*i 
the  Wilber force  of  America.     But  there  were  also 

present  Samuel  J.  May,  a  young  Unitarian  minis 
ter  from  Connecticut,  his  cousin,  Samuel  E.  Sewall, 
a  Boston  lawyer,  and  his  brother-in-law,  A.  Bronson 
Alcott.  Mr.  May  has  recorded  his  impressions. 
"Never  before,"  he  says,  "was  I  so  affected  by  the 
speech  of  man.  When  he  had  ceased  speaking  I 
said  to  those  around  me:  'That  is  a  providential 
man ;  he  is  a  prophet ;  he  will  shake  our  nation  to 
the  centre,  but  he  will  shake  slavery  out  of  it.  We 
ought  to  know  him,  we  ought  to  help  him.  Come, 
let  us  go  and  give  him  our  hands ! ' '  They  gave 
the  lecturer  their  hands;  Mr.  Alcott  invited  him 
to  his  home,  and  there  they  all  sat  late  into  the 
night  listening  to  him  as  he  proved  that  immediate, 
unconditional  emancipation,  without  expatriation, 
was  the  right  of  every  slave  and  could  not  be  with 
held  by  his  master  an  hour  without  sin.  "That 
night,"  says  Mr.  May,  "my  soul  was  baptized  in 
his  spirit,  and  ever  since  I  have  been  a  disciple  and 
fellow-laborer  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison."  Sewall 

also  became  a  zealous  disciple  and  very  helpful. 

(37) 


Garrison  had  made  up  his  mind  to  set  up  another 
an ti -slavery  journal.  His  old  friend  and  comrade, 
Isaac  Knapp,  was  ready  to  join  him  in  the  venture. 
The  question  was  whether  the  place  of  publica 
tion  should  be  Washington  or  Boston.  Washington 
was  the  centre  of  government,  but  Boston  was  the 
centre  of  opinion,  and  assuredly  it  was  not  less  in 
need  of  having  the  Gospel  preached  to  it  than  any 
district  in  which  slavery  reigned.  The  revolution 
of  sentiment  to  be  effected  was  greater,  as  Garrison 
said,  in  the  Free  States,  and  particularly  in  New 
England,  than  in  the  South.  He  found  in  New  Eng 
land  "  contempt  more  bitter,  opposition  more  active, 

.  detraction  more  relentless,  prejudice  more  stubborn, 
and  apathy  more  frozen,  than  among  slave-owners 

1  themselves."  Frozen  apathy,  at  all  events,  could 
not  be  the  condition  of  the  people  at  the  South ;  and 
if  perchance  any  of  them  had  hearts  to  be  touched, 
they  had  that  before  their  eyes  and  in  their  ears 
which  would  touch  their  hearts,  while  from  the  eye 
and  ear  of  the  North  the  bleeding  back  of  the  slave 
and  his  cry  of  agony  were  far  away.  Washington 
had  held  out  no  encouragement.  Moreover,  Lundy 
had  already  taken  the  Genius  there,  and  a  second 
*  anti-slavery  sheet  was  not  required.  So  it  was  at 
Boston,  "within  sight  of  Bunker  Hill  and  in  the 
birthplace  of  liberty,"  that  the  flag  of  Emancipation 
was  raised.  On  that  spot,  every  Fourth  of  July, 

(38) 


most  loudly  resounded  the  thunders  of  patriotic 
declamation  against  the  memory  of  the  British 
oppressor,  whose  tyranny  had  been  felt  by  the  col 
onists,  not  in  whips  and  chains,  but  in  a  small  duty 
on  tea.  On  that  spot  still  great  meetings  were  held, 
and  torrents  of  generous  eloquence  were  poured 
forth,  in  the  cause  of  the  trampled  Pole  and  the 
insurgent  Greek.  Nor  was  this  the  mere  Pharisa 
ism  of  liberty;  it  was  all  perfectly  genuine  in  its 
way.  Our  powers  of  self-deception  are  unbounded. 

(39) 


IV. 


Ox  Saturday,  January  1,  1831,  the  first  number 
of  the  Liberator  appeared.  It  was  a  weekly  journal 
bearing  the  names  of  William  Lloyd  Garrison  and 
Isaac  Knapp  as  publishers.  Its  motto  was,  "Our 
Country  is  the  World,  Our  Countrymen  are  Man 
kind,"  a  direct  challenge  to  those  whose  motto  was 
the  Jingo  cry  of  those  days,  "Our  Country,  right 
or  wrong!"  It  was  a  modest  folio,  with  a  page  of 
four  columns,  measuring  fourteen  inches  by  nine 
and  a  quarter.  Garrison,  as  we  have  said,  was  very 
skilful  as  a  printer,  and  his  journal,  in  neatness  and 
accuracy,  did  justice  to  his  skill.  The  paper  had 
not  a  dollar  of  capital.  It  was  printed  at  first  with 
borrowed  type.  Garrison  and  Knapp  did  all  the 
work  of  every  kind  between  them,  Garrison  of  Course 
doing  the  editorials.  That  he  wrote  them  can 
hardly  be  said :  his  habit  was  often  to  set  up  with 
out  manuscript.  The  office  was  at  Merchants' 
Hall,  burned  down  in  the  great  fire  of  1872,  in  the 
thirc  story,  under  the  eaves.  Oliver  Johnson,  who 
was  often  there,  has  vividly  described  the  dingy 
walls;  the  small  windows  bespattered  with  print- 

(40) 


er's  ink;  the  press  standing  in  one  corner;  the 
composing-stands  opposite;  the  long  editorial  and 
mailing  table  covered  with  newspapers ;  the  xbed  of 
the  editor  and  publisher  on  the  floor.  The  publishers 
announced  in  their  first  issue  their  determination 
to  go  on  as  long  as  they  had  bread  and  water  to 
live  on.  In  fact,  they  lived  on  bread  and  milk,  with 
a  little  fruit  and  a  few  cakes,  which  they  bought  in 
small  shops  below.  Garrison  apologizes  for  the 
meagreness  of  the  editorials,  which,  he  says,  he 
has  but  six  hours,  and  those  at  midnight,  to 
compose,  all  the  rest  of  his  time  and  the  whole 
of  that  of  his  companion  being  taken  up  by  the 
mechanical  work.  He  hoped  soon  to  have  a  negro 
apprentice  to  help  them.  Let  it  be  remembered 
that  Garrison  had  in  him,  as  a  printer  and  a  writer, 
the  means  of  earning  a  sure  and  comfortable  liveli 
hood,  and,  as  a  writer,  in  a  way  gratifying  to  the 
ambition  which  his  detractors  paint  as  his  ruling 
motive.  Supposing  even  that  his  whole  subsequent 
career  was  a  series  of  errors,  honor  and  gratitude 
would  surely  be  due  to  him  who,  at  twenty-six,  with 
few  friends  and  no  resources  but  those  of  his  own 
heart  and  brain,  could  thus  sincerely  devote  himself 
to  a  life's  battle  with  a  gigantic  power  of  evil.  That 
his  devotion  was  sincere,  his  perseverance  for  thirty- 
five  years  amid  hardships  and  discouragements,  of 

which  penury  was  not  the  greatest,  is  the  proof. 

(41) 


It  was  against  nothing  less  than  the  world,  or  at 
least  the  world  in  which  he  lived,  that  this  youth  of 
twenty-six,  with  his  humble  partner,  took  up  arms. 
,  Slavery  was  at  the  height  of  its  power.  It  had  been 
firmly  installed  in  the  Government  by  the  complete 
victory  of  Jackson  over  Quincy  Adams ;  for  Jackson, 
though"  opposed  to  Southern  nullification  and  seces- 
sionism,  was  a  stanch  friend  of  slavery!  Since  the 
conflict  which  ended  in  the  Missouri  Compromise,  the 
slave-owning  South  had  become  solid,  and  no  candi 
date  for  the  all -cove  ted  Presidency  could  hope  to 
succeed  if  he  was  under  its  ban.  Democrats  and 
Whigs,  therefore,  alike  bent  their  consciences  to  its 
dictation  and  courted  its  vote.  Its  fell  influence 
was  to  be  shown  a  few  years  hence  by  the  miserable 
fall  of  Webster.  It  had  passed  the  provisional  and 
precarious  stage  of  its  existence,  had  put  off  its 
apologetic  attitude,  had  proclaimed  itself  righteous 
and  perpetual.  Strong  in  its  evil  convictions,  it 
wore  a  sort  of  moral  majesty  in  comparison  with 
the  recreant  North.  Instead  of  the  quiet  demise 
which  had  once  been  its  ostensible  demand,  it  had 
begun  to  dream  not  only  of  endless  life  but  of  un 
limited  extension.  The  people  idolized  the  Union 
which  had  been  the  source  to  them  of  wealth,  se 
curity,  and  greatness;  and  the  threat  of  secession 
brandished  over  their  heads  by  the  slave-owner  was 
enough,  as  in  the  sequel  lamentably  appeared,  to 

(42) 


bring  all  with  whom  political  considerations  were 
supreme  to  his  feet.  The  interest  of  commerce  in 
slavery,  since  the  invention  of  the  cotton-gin'  and 
the  development  of  the  cotton  trade,  was  immense, 
and  was  apparently  bound  up  with  the  institution, 
it  being  assumed  on  all  hands  that  without  negro 
labor  cotton  could  not  be  raised.  Nor  was  the  stake 
of  the  North  in  the'-trade  much  less  than  that  of 
the  South,  since  the  North  largely  supplied  the  capi 
tal  and  the  machinery  of  distribution,  wrhile  the 
debts  which  Southern  improvidence  contracted  had 
made  the  North  its  creditor  for  an  enormous  sum. 
May,  the  abolitionist,  wras  called  out  from  an  anti- 
slavery  meeting  at  New  York  by  a  leading  mer 
chant  of  the  city,  who  said  to  him:  "Mr.  May,  we 
are  not  such  fools  as  not  to  know  that  slavery  is  a 
great  evil,  a  great  wrong.  But  it  was  consented  to 
by  the  founders  of  our  republic.  It  was  provided 
for  in  the  Constitution  of  our  Union.  A  great  por 
tion  of  the  property  of  the  Southerners  is  invested 
under  its  sanction ;  and  the  business  of  the  North  as 
well  as  the  South  has  become  adjusted  to  it.  There 
are  millions  upon  millions  of  dollars  due  from 
Southerners  to  the  merchants  and  mechanics  of  this 
city  alone,  the  payment  of  which  would  be  jeop 
ardized  by  any  rupture  between  the  North  and  the 
South.  We  cannot  afford,  sir,  to  let  you  and  your 

associates  succeed  in  your  endeavor  to  overthrow 

(43) 


/".  slavery.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  principle  with  us;  it 
is  a  matter  of  business  necessity.  We  cannot  afford 
to  let  you  succeed  ;  and  I  have  called  you  out  to  let 
you  know,  and  to  let  your  fellow-laborers  know, 
that  we  do  not  mean  to  allow  you  to  succeed.  We 
mean,  sir,  to  put  you  abolitionists  down  —  by  fair 
means  if  we  can,  by  foul  means  if  we  must."  It  is 
still  rather  hard  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Slavery  was  not  less  clearly 
an  economical  mistake  than  it  was  a  moral  wrong, 
slave  labor  being  more  costly  than  free  labor,  as 
well  as  less  intelligent.  This  was  demonstrable,  but 
it  was  slavery  that  owed  the  millions  to  the  mer 
chants  of  New  York.  Nor  was  the  influence  of  the 
South  over  the  North  political  and  commercial  alone, 
it  was  also  social.  Aristocracy,  albeit  the  aris 
tocracy  of  slave-owners,  or  even  of  slave  -breeders, 
imposed  upon  the  mercantile  Yankee,  though  in  all 
essential  respects  he  was  far  superior  to  the  South 
erner,  as  Venetian  aristocracy  had  once  imposed 
upon  the  mercantile  Florentine.  Southern  mag 
nates  brought  their  high  airs  and  their  ostentation 
of  chivalry  to  Washington  and  the  Northern  water 
ing-places,  while  Southern  youths  were  the  mirrors 
of  fashion  in  Northern  universities.  Slavery  gave 
the  tone  to  society  through  all  its  circles  down  even 
to  the  lowest.  The  boot-black  was  for  slavery,  as  well 
as  the  Boston  or  New  York  financier,  and  felt  that 

(44) 


he  caught  a  ray  of  aristocracy  thereby.     The  Roman 
Catholic  Irish,  who  were  now  immigrating  in  large 
numbers,  indemnified  themselves  for  their  oppres 
sion  in  their  own  country  by  setting  their  feet  upon 
the  negro,  whose  subjection  they  learned  to  prize  as 
giving  them  a  comparative  elevation,  and  they  went 
almost  as  one  man  into  the  party  of  slavery.     The 
War  of  1812,  made  by  a  triumph  of  Southern  pas 
sion  over  Northern  principle,  had  been  followed  at 
once  by  a    triumph    of    military  sentiment  and  a 
relaxation  of    Puritan    morality.       Moreover,    the 
development  of  commerce  and  the  opening  of  new 
mines  of  wealth  by  the  extension  of  canals,  the  in 
troduction  of  railways  and  the  spread  of  settlement, 
had  turned  the  minds  of  men  to  gain,  made  them 
desirous  of  political  quiet,  and  indisposed  them  to 
moral  effort.     Under  such  influences  people  easily 
laid  any  flattering  unction  to  their  souls,  persuading 
themselves  that  the  slaves  were  better  off  than  they 
would  have  been  in  Africa,  that  they  could  not  be 
set  free  without  danger  of  a  massacre,   that  the 
constitutional  impediments  to    emancipation  were 
insuperable,  that  the  faith  of  the  nation  pledged  to 
the  South  must  be  kept,  and  that,  as  the  American 
Republic  was  the  peculiar  care  of  heaven,  every 
thing  must  come  right  in  the  end.     Seldom  has  a 
nation  been  in  a  more  dangerous  mood  or  more  in 
need  of  the  moral  crusader.      The  churches  were 

(45) 


controlled,  and  the  pulpits  either  silenced  or  tuned  in 
favor  of  slavery  by  the  commercial  interests  and  the 
political  or  social  conservatism  which  prevailed  in 
the  congregations.  The  press  was  under  the  censor 
ship  of  slavery,  which  extended  not  only  over  jour 
nalism  but  over  literature.  Foreign  books,  if  they 
contained  anti-slavery  sentiments,  were  expurgated 
for  the  American  market.  So  national  morality 

was  dumb. 

(46) 


V. 


ANCIENT  slavery  was  bad  enough.  Let  those  who 
dote  on  Athenian  civilization  turn  from  the  pages 
of  Plato  or  the  marbles  of  Phidias  to  the  lines  in  the 
u  Frogs"  of  Aristophanes  playfully  rehearsing  the 
tortures  which  were  applied  to  the  slaves  at  Athens, 
though  there  the  system  of  slavery  was  lightest. 
Let  those  who  are  captivated  by  the  stately  aspect 
of  high  and  cultivated  society  at  Borne  think  of  the 
slave  chained  to  the  rich  man's  threshold,  of  the 
gangs  of  slaves  immured  in  dungeons  and  worked 
like  beasts,  of  the  servile  wars  and  the  horrors  of 
the  vengeance  which  followed,  of  the  filthy  licen 
tiousness  of  which  slaves  were  the  wretched  minis 
ters.  Yet  ancient  slavery  came  to  some  extent  in 
the  course  of  nature.  It  seemed  natural  and  right 
to  a  philosopher  like  Aristotle,  whose  writings 


for  his  age,  full  of  humanity,  and  who  could  speak 
beautifully  and  tenderly  about  affection.  In  itself 
it  did  no  more  violence  to  the  moral  sense  of  the 
slave-owner  than  is  done  to  the  moral  sense  of  the 
red  ant  when  he  makes  the  black  ant  his  thrall.  It 

was  to  some  extent  justified  by  the  circumstances 

(47) 


of  the  community  in  days  in  which  war  was  the 
general  state  and  the  freemen  formed  a  warrior 
class  defending  the  industrial  class,  to  whom  the 
enjoyment  of  security  partly  made  up  for  the  lack 
of  freedom.  Nor  was  it  hopeless,  since,  there  being 
no  insurmountable  barrier  of  race,  the  slave  might 
look  for  a  real  emancipation,  which  placed  him  or 
his  children  on  a  level  with  the  master  class,  and  in 
the  imperial  court  of  Rome  sometimes  gave  him 
the  key  of  immense  wealth  and  overweening  power. 
Even  without  emancipation  there  might  be  real 
friendship  and  almost  moral  equality  between  a 
good  master  like  Cicero  and  a  slave  like  Tiro.  In 
this  way,  and  with  reference  to  the  ultimate  out 
come  in  human  evolution,  ancient  slavery  might 
be  regarded  as  a  sort  of  educational  process  applied 
to  an  inferior  race.  The  possession  of  unlimited 
power  over  fellow -men  must  always  corrupt;  but 
ancient  slavery  did  not  so  far  corrupt  the  master 
class  as  to  prevent  it  from  producing  noble  and 
beautiful  characters,  as  well  as  rendering  the  most 
brilliant  intellectual  services  to  civilization.  Negro 
slavery  in  the  Southern  States,  and  wherever  else 
it  existed,  was  a  hideous  anachronism;  it  was  a 
winter  fallen  into  the  lap  of  the  human  spring.  It 
wras  utterly  shocking  to  the  moral  sense,  as  the  re 
morse  of  the  more  virtuous  slave-owners  and  the  fury 
of  the  more  wicked  alike  proved.  If  ever  it  had  been 

(48) 


patriarchal,  even  in  the  best  households  of  the  South, 
it  had  retained  no  vestige  of  that  character  in  the 
plantations  where  slaves  were  worked  to  death  like 
beasts  for  the  profit  of  a  master  who  never  saw 
them,  by  an  overseer  who  scarcely  knew  their 
names.  CalhomTs  fine  theory  of  the  more  complex 
and  perfect  family,  with  its  three  domestic  relations 
instead  of  two,  was  belied  by  every  plantation,  and 
by  every  large  plantation  most  signally  belied.  Be 
sides,  where  was  the  family  of  the  slave?  That  a 
subject  race  was  undergoing  a  process  of  education 
could  not  seriously  be  maintaind  when  it  was  denied 
the  freedom  of  instruction  even  in  the  rudiments 
of  knowledge,  freedom  of  meeting  even  for  the 
purpose  of  worship,  freedom  of  intercourse,  freedom 
of  locomotion — everything,  in  short,  that  could 
raise  it  above  the  condition  of  beasts.  The  negroes 
were  deliberately  and  systematically  embruted  by 
law,  lest,  becoming  intelligent,  they  should  aspire 
to  liberty.  Moral  elevation  there  could  be  none 
where  stable  wedlock  was  denied  and  parental  rela 
tions  were  set  at  naught ;  husband  and  wife,  parent 
and  child,  being  sent  to  separate  auction -blocks 
when  the  interest  of  the  slave-holder  gave  the  word. 
It  was  averred  that  the  slave  was  happy.  If  he 
was,  even  in  the  most  swinish  way,  why  the  chains, 
why  the  blood-hounds,  why  the  demands  upon  the 
North  for  increased  strictness  in  the  execution  of 

(49) 


the  fugitive-slave  laws?  Why  was  it  assumed  by 
the  opponents  of  emancipation  that  if  the  slaves 
were  set  free  their  first  act  would  be  the  massacre  of 
their  masters?  The  accounts  of  cruelties  practised  on 
slaves  it  is  needless  and  would  be  odious  to  rehearse. 
They  are  as  well  attested  as  they  are  sickening.* 
In  Tennessee,  a  Slave  State,  but  not  a  centre  of  the 
venom  of  slavery,  a  negro  who  had  killed  his  master 
was  burned  alive  at  a  slow  fire,  a  thousand  citizens 
coolly  looking  on,  and  the  editor  of  a  paper,  who 
was  a  Methodist  preacher,  saying  that  he  would 
himself  not  only  have  taken  part  but  have  proposed 
that  the  negro,  instead  of  being  merely  burned, 
should  be  torn  to  pieces  with  red-hot  pinchers,  f  If 
the  large  plantation,  where  the  overseer  was  driv 
ing  the  negroes  to  death  that  he  might  boast  of 
having  raised  the  largest  crop,  was  the  chief  scene 
of  these  horrors,  they  would  not  fail  to  occur  more 
or  less  wherever  passion  was  unbridled  and  its  vic 
tims  were  helpless,  while  the  community  took  the 
guilt  upon  its  conscience  and  compromised  its  mo 
rality  by  connivance,  if  not  by  tacit  approbation. 

*  See  Rankin's  "Letters  on  American  Slavery,"  especially 
Letter  VIII.  See  also  Olmsted's  "Journeys  and  Explorations  in 
the  Cotton  Kingdom,"  Vol.  II.,  Chapter  V. 

f  Olmsted's  "Journeys  and  Explorations  in  the  Cotton  King 
dom,"  II.,  352.  Another  case  is  given  in  the  same  volume, 
page  349.  Judge  Jay  told  Mr.  Olmsted  that  he  had  evidence  in 
his  possession  every  year  for  twenty  years. 

(50) 


Unlike  ancient  slavery,  negro  slavery  in  America 
was  hopeless,  for  color  was  a  fatal  bar  to  fusion, 
and  the  lot  of  the  freed  negro,  a  hated  and  sus 
pected  pariah,  was  little  better  than  that  of  the 
•slave.  The  effect  on  the  character  of  the  masters 
could  not  be  doubtful.  It  was  deplored  by  the  best 
men  of  the  South.  Gentlemen  no  doubt  the  South 
had,  with  the  ease  and  grace  of  manner  and  the 
flowing  hospitality  which  assured  position,  wealth, 
and  freedom  from  toil  or  trade  often  produce ;  but 
the  normal  outcome  of  domestic  despotism  was  the 
fire-eater  and  the  bully.  Unlike  the  ancient  slave 
owner,  the  American  slave-owner  was  consciously 
trampling  on  humanity.  If  he  desperately  tried  to 
persuade  himself  that  the  negro  whom  he  deprived 
of  his  wages  and  tore  from  his  wife  and  children 
was  not  a  man,  what  had  he  to  say  about  the 
existence  all  around  him  of  mulattoes  and  quad 
roons?  Participation  in  the  trade  of  slave-breeding, 
which  had  taken  the  place  of  the  foreign  slave- 
trade,  must  have  been  utterly  fatal  to  the  character 
of  a  gentleman.  The  young  planter  was  reared  by 
negro  nurses  and  companions  in  grossness  and  moral 
filthiness  as  well  as  in  the  habit  of  tyranny.  An 
actual  slave-driver  daily  lashing  helpless  men  and 
women  could  never  fail  to  take  the  impress  of  his 
trade.  The  "mean  whites,"  if  they  were  not  em 
ployed  in  slave-driving,  eschewed  industry,  which 

(51) 


they  deemed  the  badge  of  the  slave,  and  lived  a  life 
little  better  than  vagabondage,  while  they  were 
servile  dependents  on  the  great  planters,  though 
their  hearts  were  full  of  the  evil  pride  of  race. 
Drinking,  gambling,  and  fighting  were  their  pleas-' 
ures. 

Olmsted  has  left  us  an  inestimable  picture  of 
society  in  the  Cotton  States  as  it  was  before  the 
war.  Evidently  it  was  barbarism,  masked  by  a 
thin  veneer  of  luxury  and  high  living,  with  little 
real  comfort  or  refinement  on  the  top.  The  Cotton 
States  had  no  literature  or  science.  Even  the 
boasted  hospitality  of  the  South  seems  to  have  been 
little  more  than  the  rich  man's  craving  for  company 
in  a  social  waste.  The  higher  industries,  with  their 
civilizing  influence,  were  excluded  not  only  by  the 
economical  but  by  the  social  and  political  conditions 
of  a  system  which  a  body  of  free  and  intelligent 
mechanics  would  have  overturned.  The  commerce 
of  the  whites  with  the  black  women  who  were  in 
their  power  could  not  fail  to  impair  the  dignity  and 
purity  of  domestic  life.  Nor  could  property  in 
female  quadroons  and  octoroons  fail  to  give  birth 
to  a  commerce  of  lust.  If  the  consignment  by  a 
heartless  white  of  his  own  offspring  to  the  slave- 
dealer  was  rare,  it  was  not  unknown.  The  churches, 
instead  of  combating  the  power  of  evil,  put  on  its 

livery,  consecrated  its  wrong-doings,   and  wrested 

(52) 


the  Gospel  to  its  service.  One  Church  sanctioned 
polygamy  when  ordained  by  the  cupidity  of  the* 
slave-breeder,  and  another  endorsed  the  rule  exclud 
ing  negro  evidence.  Not  one  of  them  seems  eveii 
to  have  preached  mercy,  much  less  justice.  All 
this  may  be  freely  recounted  now,  since  the  South', 
having  not  only  lost  slavery,  but  renounced  it,  the 
whole  story  belongs  to  the  past ;  though  something! 
of  the  barbarous  recklessness  of  human  life  engen- . 
dered  by  the  system  lingers  in  its  old  seats,  and 
the  lynching  of  negroes,  instead  of  bringing  them 
to  regular  trial,  is  still  terribly  common. 

In  its  fall  the  slave  power  was  glorified  by  splen 
did  feats  of  arms.  The  virtues  of  the  soldier,  if 
any,  were  those  which  a  system  teaching  scorn  of 
industry  was  likely  to  breed  in  the  dominant  race. 
But  it  was  by  the  love  of  country,  and  by  the  spirit 
of  men  defending  their  homes  against  an  invader, 
more  than  by  slavery,  or  even  by  the  pride  of  race, 
that  the  arm  of  Southern  heroism  was  moved.  Of 
the  many  who  fought  bravely  on  those  famous  fields 
only  a  mere  fraction  were  owners  of  slaves. 

The  advocates  of  slavery  wrought  themselves  up 
at  last  to  the  belief  that  it  was  the  indispensable 
basis  of  a  republic.  They  talked  even  of  relighting 
the  torch  of  liberty  at  the  altar  of  slavery.  They 
had  the  ancient  republics  in  their  minds,  as  had 

Rousseau  when  he  lapsed   into  the  same   heresy. 

(53) 


But  those  republics  were  not  democracies;  they 
were  oligarchies  of  warriors  more  or  less  narrow. 
To  a  truly  democratic  republic,  such  as  the  United 
States  aimed  at  being,  slavery  with  its  oligarchy  of 
masters  was  deadly  poison.  This  its  advocates 
themselves  proclaimed  when  they  poured  scorn  on 
a  commonwealth  of  "greasy  mechanics,"  and 
avowed  their  belief  that  slavery  would  be  the  right 
relation  everywhere  between  the  employer  and-  the 
employed.  On  the  other  hand,  it  had  great  politi 
cal  strength  of  an  aggressive  kind.  \  Its  political 
leaders  and  representatives  in  Congress  were  held 
together  by  a  firm  bond  of  social  and  commercial  in 
terest.  Their  minds  were  entirely  devoted  to  politics ; 
they  had  almost  a  life- tenure  of  their  seats,  while 
other  members  of  Congress  held  their  seats  by  the 
precarious  tenure  of  popular  favor:  amid  an  as 
sembly  of  merchants  and  platform  speakers  they 
were  statesmen ;  in  this  respect  the  country  has 
not  since  produced  their  peers.  They  imposed  by 
their  assumption  of  social  superiority,  by  the  lofti 
ness  of  their  bearing,  and  by  their  familiarity  with 
the  habit  and  language  of  command.  No  wonder 
if  the  republic  was  almost  at  their  feet ! 

In  1831  there  was  arising  of  slaves  at  Southamp 
ton,  in  Virginia,  headed  by  Nat  Turner,  who  appears 
to  have  been  half -crazed.  The  houses  of  planters 

were  burned,  planters  and  their  families  were  slain. 

(54) 


A  terrible  outpouring  of  white  vengeance  ensued. 
In  an  assembly  of  the  Virginia  Legislature  which 
followed,  voices  were  raised  against  slavery  as  the 
bane  and  peril  of  the  State.  These  were  the  dying 
accents  of  the  anti-slavery  sentiment  which  had  been 
freely  expressed  by  Virginian  patriots  such  as  Jef 
ferson  and  Randolph.  More  in  keeping  with  exist 
ing  sentiment  was  the  protest  that  "a  slave-owner 
had  as  good  a  right  to  the  child  of  his  own  slave  as 
to  the  foal  of  his  own  mare."  Abolitionism  in  Vir 
ginia  was  thenceforth  silent,  and  the  hope  of  eman 
cipation  from  within  had  breathed  its  last. 

If  slavery  did  not  exist  in  the  North,  caste  did, 
and  with  even  greater  intensity  than  at  the  South, 
where  the  planter's  children,  brought  up  by  negro 
nurses,  learned  habits  of  familiarity  with  the  race, 
and  where,  the  black  man  having  as  a  slave  no  more 
social  pretensions  than  a  dog,  the  white  man  could 
not  be  compromised  by  the  contact.  At  the  North 
the  negro  was  free,  but  a  pariah,  or  something  lower 
still.  He  was  not  allowed  to  associate  with  thej 
whites  in  any  way.  His  children  could  not  be  in 
the  public  school  with  them.  He  could  not  sit  down- 
to  table  with  them,  or  sit  beside  them  in  the  theatre 
or  the  street-cars.  He  could  not  worship  beside  \ 
them  in  the  churches,  where  it  was  proclaimed  in 
the  name  of  Christ  that  God  had  made  all  races  of 
one  blood  to  dwell  together  on  the  earth.  He  was 

(55) 


excluded  from  all  professions,  from  all  the  nigher 
k  callings,  and  even  from  all  handicraft  of  the  skilled 
kind,  nothing  being  left  to  him  but  manual  and 
menial  labor.  "Where  is  the  use,"  plaintively 
murmured  an  intelligent  negro  boy,  "  of  me  trying  to 
learn,  when  I  can  never  be  anything  but  'a  nigger'  ?" 
His  presence  and  touch  were  hardly  less  offensive 
than  those  of  the  vilest  animal.  Most  men  would 
probably  have  thought  less  of  being  convicted  of 
sharp  practice  in  commerce,  or  of  any  crime  of  vio 
lence  short  of  murder,  than  of  a  serious  derogation 
from  white  caste  in  intercourse  with  a  negro.  The 
very  mention  of  a  mixed  marriage  would  have  been 
worse  than  blasphemy.  Had  the  slaves  been  white 
the  whole  scene  would  have  been  changed,  and 
slavery  would  have  been  swept  away  in  a  flood  of 
philanthropic  sentiment,  lit  was  color  that  was 
fatal,  and  fatal  in  a  sense  in  which  perhaps  Garri 
son  never  allowed  his  thoughts  to  dwell.  The  only 
bright  point  in  the  horizon  was  England,  where 
humanity  had  triumphed  and  emancipation  was 

close  at  hand. 

(56) 


VI. 


EMANCIPATION  immediate,  unconditional,  and 
without  compensation — such  was  the  platform  on 
which  Garrison  had  now  taken  his  stand,  and  such 
were  the  doctrines  which  the  Liberator,  as  soon  as 
it  got  fairly  under  way,  began  to  preach.  The  first 
article  followed  upon  the  belief  in  the  utter  wrong- 
fulness  and  sinfulness  of  slavery,  which  was  the 
necessary  basis  of  the  moral  and  religious  move 
ment,  and  in  grasping  which  Garrison  had  grasped 
the  sole  and  certain  assurance  of  victory.  If 
man  could  have  no  property  in  man,  he  could  no 
more  have  property  for  a  day  than  for  ever.  The 
slave  was  at  once  entitled  to  his  freedom ;  he  was 
entitled  to  set  himself  free  if  he  could  by  flight  or 
by  insurrection.  If  the  slaves  who  were  shipped  in 
Mr.  Todd's  vessel  had  risen  upon  the  crew,  tumbled 
into  the  hold  or  even  killed  those  who  resisted,  and 
carried  the  vessel  into  a  free  port,  they  would  have 
been  doing  right  in  the  eyes  of  all  but  the  slave 
owner  and  his  friends.  For  the  same  reason  it  was 
logical  to  protest  against  any  condition  not  imposed 
in  the  interest  of  the  slave.  But  conditions  might 

(57) 


be  imposed  in  the  slave's  interest,  to  smooth  and 
safeguard  a  transition  which  no  reasonable  man 
could  believe  to  be  free  from  peril.  The  policy  of 
provisional  apprenticeship  was  adopted  for  that 
purpose  by  the  British  Parliament,  and  though 
without  practical  success,  certainly  without  moral 
wrong.  But  in  refusing  to  sanction  compensation 
to  the  slave-owner,  Garrison  would  surely  have  gone 
astray.  What  is  or  is  not  property  in  the  eye 
of  morality,  morality  must  decide.  What  is  or  is 
not  property  in  a  particular  community  is  decided 
by  the  law  of  that  community.  The  law  of  the 
American  community  had  sanctioned  the  holding  of 
property  in  slaves,  and  though  the  slave  was  not 
bound  by  that  law  the  community  itself  was.  Men 
had  been  induced  to  invest  their  money  in  slaves 
under  the  guarantee  of  the  public  faith,  and  eman 
cipation  without  compensation,  so  far  as  the  re 
public  was  concerned,  would  have  been  breach  of 
faith  and  robbery.  The  slave-owner  had  sinned  no 
more  in  holding  slaves  than  the  State  had  sinned  in 
sanctioning  his  possession,  and  if  a  sacrifice  was  to 
be  made  to  public  morality,  equity  demanded  that 
it  should  be  made  by  all  alike.  The  British  legis 
lature,  overriding  extremist  proposals,  acted  upon 
this  principle ;  and  it  did  right.  What  the  conscience 
of  the  individual  slave-owner  might  dictate  to  him 
was  another  affair.  To  declare  that  there  should 

(58) 


be  no  compensation,  and  thus  to  threaten  a  power 
ful  body  of  proprietors  with  beggary,  Would  have 
been  to  make  the  conflict  internecine.  After  the 
civil  war  it  was  sorrowfully  recalled  that  the  price 
of  the  slaves  would  have  been  about  six  hundred 
millions,  which  would  have  been  a  cheap  redemption 
from  a  struggle  which  cost  eight  thousand  millions 
of  dollars,  besides  the  blood  and  havoc.  If  the 
Liberator  had  been  instrumental  in  preventing  such 
a  settlement,  a  dark  shade  of  responsibility  would 
rest  upon  its  pages.  But  it  is  not  likely  that  the 
settlement  ever  could  have  taken  place.  Not  the 
commercial  interest  alone  of  the  slave -owner,  but 
his  political  ambition  and  his  social  pride  were 
bound  up  with  the  institution.  If  he  had  been 
willing  to  part  with  his  crops  of  cotton  and  tobacco, 
he  would  not  have  been  willing  to  part  writh  his 
aristocracy.  Nor  would  it  have  been  easy,  when 
the  State  had  paid  its  money,  to  enforce  the  real 
fulfilment  of  the  bargain.  Even  now,  when  the 
South  has  been  humbled  by  defeat,  it  is  not  easy 
to  make  her  obey  the  law.  Nothing  more  than  the 
substitution  of  serfage  for  slavery  would  probably 
have  been  the  result.  Any  such  scheme,  however, 
would  scarcely  have  been  feasible  for  a  government 
like  that  of  the  American  republic.  The  redemp 
tion  of  the  slaves  in  the  West  Indies  had  been 
conceived  and  carried  into  effect  by  the  imperial 

(59) 


government  and  Parliament,  acting  upon  the  de 
pendencies  with  autocratic  power.  A  czar  conceived 
and  carried  into  effect  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
in  Russia.  But  a  measure  of  this  kind  could  hardly 
have  been  conceived,  much  less  could  it  have  been 
carried  into  effect,  amid  the  fluctuations  of  popu 
lar  suffrage  and  the  distractions  of  political  party. 
It  is  probable  that  the  conflict  was  really  irrepres 
sible,  and  doomed  to  end  either  in  separation  or 
civil  war. 

The  salutatory  of  the  Liberator  avowed  that  its 
editor  meant  to  speak  out  without  restraint.  "I 
will  be  as  harsh  as  truth  and  as  uncompromising  as 
justice.  On  this  subject  I  do  not  wish  to  think  or 
,  speak  or  write  with  moderation.  No!  No!  Tell 
a  man  whose  house  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moderate  - 
alarm ;  tell  him  to  moderately  rescue  his  wife  from 
the  hands  of  the  ravisher;  tell  the  mother  to  grad 
ually  extricate  her  babe  from  the  fire  into  which  it 
has  fallen — but  urge  me  not  to  use  moderation  in 
a  cause  like  the  present.  I  am  in  earnest — I  will 
i  not  equivocate — I  will  not  excuse — I  will  not  re- 
1  treat  a  single  inch — and  I  will  be  heard !"  This 
promise  was  amply  kept.  Some  of  Garrison's  best 
friends,  and  of  the  best  friends  of  his  cause,  com 
plained  of  the  severity  of  his  language,  and  their 
complaint  cannot  be  set  aside  as  unfounded.  Rail 
ing  accusations  are  a  mistake,  even  when  the  delin- 

(00) 


quent  is  Satanic.  Unmeasured  and  indiscriminate 
language  can  never  be  justified.  Washington  had 
inherited  an  evil  kind  of  property  and  an  imperfect 
morality  in  connection  with  it;  but  no  one  could 
have  called  him  a  man-stealer;  and  there  were  still 
owners  of  slaves  to  whom  the  name  as  little  be 
longed.  Citations  of  the  controversial  invective  of 
Luther  and  Milton  will  avail  us  nothing ;  the  age 
of  Luther  and  Milton  was  in  that  respect  uncivilized. 
A  youth  dealing  with  a  subject  OH  which  his  feel 
ings  are  excited  is  sure  to  be  unmeasured.  How 
ever,  \it  was  to  the  conscience  of  the  nation  that 
Garrison  was  appealing ;  and  an  appeal  to  conscience 
is  unavoidably  severe)  Nothing  will  warrant  the 
appeal  but  that  which  necessitates  severity.  The 
voice  of  conscience  herself  within  us  is  severe.  In 
answer  to  the  clergymen  who  shrank  from  ?iim,  or 
professed  to  shrink  from  him,  on  account  of  the 
violence  of  his  language,  Garrison  might  have 
pointed,  not  only  to  passages  in  the  Hebrew  proph 
ets,  but  to  passages  in  the  discourses  of  Christ. 
He  might  have  reminded  them  of  the  language  in 
which  they  were  themselves,  every  Sunday  in  the 
pulpit,  warning  men  to  turn  from  every  sin  but 
slavery.  With  no  small  force  he  pleaded  that  he  ; 
had  icebergs  of  indifference  around  him,  and  it 
would  take  a  good  deal  of  fire  in  himself  to  melt 
them.  To  hate  and  denounce  the  sin  either  in  the 

(61) 


abstract  or  as  that  of  a  class  or  community  is  not 
to  hate  or  denounce  the  individual  sinner.  To  an 
individual  slave-owner  who  had  shown  any  disposi 
tion  to  hear  him,  Garrison  would  have  been  all  cour 
tesy  -and  kindness.  We  may  be  sure  that  he  would 
have  clasped  at  once  to  his  heart  any  slave-owner 
who  had  repented.  Having,  to  use  his  own  figure, 
taken  in  his  hand  the  trumpet  of  God,  he  resolved  to 
blow  a  strong  blast.  He  could  not  believe  that  there 
was  a  sin  without  a  sinner,  nor  could  he  separate 
the  sinner  from  the  sin.  There  was  much  wrath 
but  no  venom  in  the  man.  If  there  had  been  venom 
in  him  it  would  have  belied  his  countenance  and 
deportment.  Miss  Martineau,  not  an  uncritical  ob 
server,  was  profoundly  impressed  with  the  saint -like 
expression  and  the  sweetness  of  his  manner.  In 
private  and  in  his  family  he  was  all  gentleness  and 
affection.  Let  it  be  said,  too,  that  he  set  a  noble  ex 
ample  to  controversial  editors  in  his  fair  treatment 
of  his  opponents.  Not  only  did  he  always  give  in 
sertion  to  their  replies,  but  he  copied  their  criticisms 
from  other  journals  into  his  own.  Fighting  for  free 
dom  of  discussion,  he  was  ever  loyal  to  his  own 
principle. 

What  is  certain  is  that  the  Liberator,  in  spite  of 
the  smallness  of  its  circulation,  which  was  hardly 
enough  to  keep  it  alive,  soon  told.  The  South  was 
moved  to  its  centre.  The  editorials  probably  would 

(62) 


not  have  caused  much  alarm,  as  the  slaves  could  not 
read.  What  was  likely  to  cause  more  alarm  was 
the  frontispiece,  which  spoke  plainly  enough  to  the'^ 
slave's  eye.  It  represented  an  auction  at  which 
"  slaves,  horses,  and  other  cattle  "  were  being  offered 
for  sale,  and  a  whipping- post  at  which  a  slave  was 
being  flogged.  In  the  background  was  the  Capitol 
at  Washington,  with  a  flag  inscribed  "  Liberty  "  float 
ing  over  the  dome.  There  might  have  been  added 
the  motto  of  Virginia,  Sic  semper  tyrannis,  and 
perhaps  some  extracts  from 'the  republican  orations 
with  which  even  now  the  South  was  celebrating  the 
victory  of  French  liberty  over  Charles  X.  On  seeing 

the  Liberator  the  realm  of  slavery  bestirred  itself. 

rAJ 
A.  Vigilance  Association  took  the  matter  in  hand. 

First  came  fiery  and  bloodthirsty  editorials;  then 
anonymous  threats;  then  attempts  by  legal  enact 
ment  to  prevent  the  circulation  of  the  Liberator  at 
the  South.  The  Grand  Jury  of  North  Carolina  found 
a  true  bill  against  Garrison  for  the  circulation  of  a 
paper  of  seditious  tendency,  the  penalty  for  which 
was  whipping  and  imprisonment  for  the  first  offence, 
and  death  without  benefit  of  clergy  for  the  second. 
The  General  Assembly  of  Georgia  offered  a  reward 
of  five  thousand  dollars  to  any  one  who,  under  the 
laws  of  that  State,  should  arrest  the  editor  of  the 
Liberator,  bring  him  to  trial,  and  prosecute  him  to 
conviction.  The  South  reproached  Boston  with 


allowing  a  battery  to  be  planted  on  her  soil  against 
the  ramparts  of  Southern  institutions.  Boston  felt 
the  reproach,  and  showed  that  she  would  gladly  have 
suppressed  the  incendiary  print  and  perhaps  have 
delivered  up  its  editor ;  but  the  law  was  against  her, 
and  the  mass  of  the  people,  though  wavering  in  their 
allegiance  to  morality  on  the  question  of  slavery, 
were  still  loyal  to  freedom  of  opinion.  When  a 
Southern  Governor  appealed  to  the  Mayor  of  Boston 
to  take  proceedings,  the  Mayor  of  Boston  could  only 
shake  his  head  and  assure  his  Southern  friend  that 
Garrison's  paper  was  of  little  account.  The  reward 
offered  by  the  General  Assembly  of  Georgia  looked 
very  like  an  incitement  to  kidnapping.  Justice  to 
the  South  requires  it  to  be  said  that  nothing  of  the 
kind  was  ever  attempted,  nor  was  the  hand  of  a 
Southern  government  visible  in  any  outrage  com 
mitted  against  abolitionists  at  the  North,  though 
individual  Southerners  might  take  part,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  Southern  fire-eater  was  always  there. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  the  South  and  its 
clientage  at  the  North  were  thrown  into  a  parox}rsm 
of  excitement  by  the  Bloody  Monday,  as  Nat  Turner's 
rising  at  Southampton  was  called.  The  rising  was 
easily  suppressed,  and  Virginia  saw,  as  Jamaica  has 
since  seen,  how  cruel  is  the  panic  of  a  dominant  race. 
Not  the  slightest  connection  of  the  outbreak  with 
Northern  abolitionism  was  traced.  That  Garrison  or 

(64) 


any  one  connected  with  him  ever  incited  the  slaves 
to  revolt,  or  said  a  word  intentionally  which  could 
lead  to  servile  war,  seems  to  be  utterly  untrue.  His 
preaching  to  the  slaves,  on  the  contrary,  was  always 
patience,  submission,  abstinence  from  violence, 
while  in  his  own  moral  code  he  carried  non-resistance 
to  an  extreme.  Moreover,  his  championship  held 
out  hope,  and  what  goads  to  insurrection  is  despair. 
The  most  incendiary  thing  ever  uttered  was  the 
judgment  of  Chief  Justice  Taney,  who  laid  it  down 
that  the  slave  had  no  rights  against  his  master, 
since  it  plainly  followed,  if  the  slave  had  no  rights 
against  his  master,  that  the  master  had  no  rights 
against  the  slave,  and  that  the  slave  was  morally  at 
liberty,  when  he  could,  to  steal  the  master's  goods  or 
cut  his  throat.  Of  the  evils  of  slavery  the  Liberator 
could  hardly  speak  in  words  more  inflammatory 
than  those  which  had  been  used  by  the  Virginian 
Jefferson  and  Randolph,  or  even  than  those  which 
w  ^re  used  by  some  members  of  the  Virginian  Assem 
bly  in  1831.  To  suppose  that  the  slaves  when  set 
free  would  fall  upon  their  masters  and  murder  them 
was  absurd ;  they  might  rise  to  break  their  chains, 
but  why  should  they  rise  when  their  chains  were 
broken?  Mr.  Birney's  slaves,  when  emancipated, 
cheerfully  took  service  under  him  as  free  laborers. 
The  horrors  of  St.  Domingo  were  committed  not  by 
free  negroes,  but  by  slaves  grievously  oppressed, 

(65) 


among  whom  had  been  thrown  the  torch  of  revolu 
tion  and  civil  war.  More  than  once  the  whites  have 
massacred  the  blacks,  but  the  blacks  have  never  in 
a  state  of  freedom  massacred  the  whites.  When  at 
last  the  slaves  in  the  South  were  enfranchised  by 
Northern  arms,  hardly  a  single  case  of  outrage 
committed  by  them  against  their  masters  was  re 
corded.  The  masters,  as  well  as  the  abolitionists, 
are  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  that  fact,  while  the 
slaves  are  entitled  to  it  most  of  all. 
I  The  nearest  approach  made  by  Garrison  to  strong 
measures  was  his  approval  of  the  Quaker  policy  of 
extinguishing  slavery  by  refusing  to  buy  its  prod 
ucts,  or  boycotting  it,  to  use  the  now  familiar  term. 
He  does  not  seem,  however,  to  have  relied  greatly 
on  this  plan,  nor  was  it  worth  much.  Products  are 
indistinguishably  blended ;  interests  are  blended  still 
more  indistinguishably ;  the  Quaker,  if  he  was  in 
trade,  though  he  might  refuse  to  wear  a  cotton  shirt 
or  to  smoke  tobacco,  could  never  be  safe  against 
having  gains  made  by  the  sale  of  cotton  or  tobacco 
in  his  pocket. 

Hardly  less  arduous  than  the  war  to  be  waged 
against  slavery  in  the  South  was  the  war  to  be 
waged  against  the  exclusiveness  of  race  at  the 
North.  Garrison  bravely  trampled  upon  caste,  and 
in  every  way  identified  himself  personally  with  the 

negroes.     Moral   courage   in    those  days  could  110 

(66) 


further  go.  His  efforts  in  this  direction,  however, 
we  cannot  help  regarding  with  a  pensive  misgiving. 
He,  like  the  enthusiasts  of  Abolition,  had  persuaded 
himself  that  color  was  nothing,  that  the  feeling  about 
it  was  a  mere  prejudice,  that  the  black  man  not  only 
was  a  brother  to  be  taken  at  once  to  the  white  man's 
heart,  but  was  in  every  respect,  intellectual  as  well 
as  moral,  the  white  man's  equal,  and,  to  prove  him 
self  so,  wanted  nothing  but  education.  To  the 
allegation  of  some  pro-slavery  fanatics  that  the  negro 
wras  not  a  man,  or  not  of  the  same  species  as  the 
white,  the  existence  on  a  large  scale  of  a  mixed  creed, 
the  offspring  of  white  lust  abusing  its  command  of 
negro  women,  was,  as  has  already  been  said,  an 
answer  hideously  conclusive.  That  the  antipathy 
and  the  contempt  felt  for  the  African  were  extrav 
agant,  and  even  vile,  that  they  were  largely  conse 
quent  on  the  brand  of  slavery  which  was  capable  of 
being  removed,  that  the  negro  had  never  had  fair 
play,  and  till  he  had,  it  was  unjust  to  disrate  him, 
intellectually  or  morally,  was  most  true.  In  his 
native  land,  it  might  be  said,  the  climate,  combined 
with  the  seductive  lavishness  of  nature,  induced 
torpor  and  repressed  effort.  To  Hayti,  it  might  be 
urged,  he  had  been  brought  in  the  slave-ship  only 
to  pass  through  a  most  cruel  and  degrading  bond 
age  into  a  tornado  of  revolutionary  strife  and  blood. 
What  he  would  be  in  such  a  country  as  the  United 

(67) 


States  and  under  the  happier  training  of  American 
institutions  still  remained  to  be  seen.  In  Hayti  he 
had  produced  Toussaint,  as  to  whose  character  there 
could  be  no  doubt,  and  as  little  as  to  his  capacity, 
since  he  had  the  honor  of  being  kidnapped  and  mur 
dered  as  a  dangerous  man  by  the  great  Napoleon. 
But  the  social  delibilityof  color  unhappily  was  a 
dream ;  the  physical  antipathy  is  a  fact  which  can 
not  be  put  out  of  sight ;  the  intellectual  inferiority 
of  the  negro,  as  a  rule,  whether  it  be  congenital  and 
ingrained,  or  the  mere  effect  of  circumstance  and 
thus  capable  of  effacement,  is  a  fact  not  to  be  gain 
said  ;  and  out  of  the  grave  of  slavery  in  the  South 
has  risen,  apparently  defying  solution,  the  problem 
of  the  races.  To  touch  the  tenderest  point :  Garrison 
demanded  the  repeal  of  a  Massachusetts  law  fining 
any  one  who  should  marry  a  negro  or  an  Indian  to 
a  white,  and  he  bore  with  perfect  serenity  the  jeers 
which  his  chivalry  provoked.  But  he  married  a 
white  woman.  Would  he  have  married  a  black? 
Could  he  have  borne  to  see  his  son  bringing 
home  a  black  wife,  or  his  daughter  in  the  arms  of 
a  black  husband?  Unless  those  questions  can  be 
answered  in  the  affirmative,  here  was  a  part  of  the 
problem,  the  depth  of  which  he  had  not  sounded, 
and  the  difficult  and  almost  desperate  character  of 
which,  were  he  now  alive,  he  would  be  forced  to  ac 
knowledge. 

(68) 


The  determination  to  keep  the  negro  down  and 
deny  him  ediication  was  not  much  less  strong  at  the 
North  than  at  the  South.  Prudence  Crandall,  a 
school  teacher,  at  Canterbury,  Conn.,  finding  that  a 
negro  girl  would  not  be  admitted  among  the  whites, 
tried,  with  Garrison's  sanction,  to  open  a  school  for 
negro  girls  alone.  The  town  was  in  a  ferment.  Miss 
Crandall  was  boycotted,  she  and  her  pupils  were 
insulted,  the  door  and  steps  of  her  house  were 
smeared  with  filth,  and  her  well  was  polluted.  As 
she  still  held  her  ground,  outraged  caste  procured 
an  enactment  subjecting  to  fine  and  imprisonment 
any  person  who  should  set  up  anywhere  in  Con 
necticut  a  school  for  resident  colored  pupils  not 
members  of  the  State.  When  the  law  was  passed, 
bells  were  rung  and  cannon  were  fired.  Miss  Cran 
dall  was  indicted  and  sent  to  jail.  Counsel  was 
found  for  her  by  Arthur  Tappan,  who  had  paid  Gar 
rison's  fine  at  Baltimore,  and  a  long  law-suit  ended 
in  a  failure  of  the  prosecution  only  on  technical 
grounds.  But  the  school  was  broken  up  by  violence, 
the  house  was  set  on  fire,  assaulted  by  a  midnight 
mob  with  clubs  and  wrecked ;  nor  was  there  any 
redress.  Let  it  be  noted  that  these  things  were 
done  not  by  magnates  of  New  York  commerce  or 
city  servants  of  Mammon,  but  by  the  rural  popula 
tion  of  a  New  England  State.  A  scheme  for  found 
ing  a  negro  college  at  New  Haven  was  crushed  at 

(69) 


once  by  a  protest  of  the  leading  citizens,  "as  an  un 
warrantable  and  dangerous  interference  with  the 
internal  concerns  of  other  States,  and  as  incompat 
ible  with  the  prosperity,  if  not  with  the  existence, 
of  the  present  institutions  of  learning.1'  The  Fac 
ulty  of  Yale,  by  their  silence,  approved  the  mani 
festo.* 

¥  5 

The  Liberator  was  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the 

^x 

^wilderness;  to  give  it  practical  force,  embodiment 
. 

in  an  organization  was  required.  The  New  Eng 
land  Anti-Slavery  Society  was  accordingly  formed. 
It  took  that  name  and  inscribed  "  Immediate  Eman 
cipation"  on  its  banner,  after  some  pleading  in  favor 
of  a  feebler  aim  and  a  milder  appellation  among  the 
more  timid,  whose  hesitation  was  overborne  by  the 
strong  will  of  Garrison.  It  was  finally  organized 
in  the  year  18 32, in  the  school-room  under  the  African 
Baptist  Church  in  Belknap  Street,  Boston.  "  Of  the 
adjourned  meeting,"  says  Mr.  Johnson,  "my  recol 
lections  are  very  vivid.  A  fierce  north-east  storm, 
combining  snow,  rain,  and  hail  in  about  equal  pro 
portions,  was  raging,  and  the  streets  were  full  of 
slush.  They  were  dark,  too,  for  the  city  of  Boston 
in  those  days  was  very  economical  of  light  on  'Nig 
ger  Hill. '  It  almost  seemed  as  if  nature  was  frown 
ing  upon  the  new  effort  to  abolish  slavery.  But 

*  Johnson's  "Garrison  and  the  Anti-Slavery  Movement,"  119- 
128. 

(70) 


the  spirits  of  the  little  company  rose  superior  to  all 
external  circumstances. "  The  preamble  of  the  Con 
stitution  was  as  follows : 

"  We,  the  undersigned,  hold  that  every  person  of 
full  age  and  sane  mind  has  a  right  to  immediate 
freedom  from  personal  bondage  of  whatsoever  kind, 
unless  imposed  by  the  sentence  of  the  law  for  the 
commission  of  some  crime.  We  hold  that  man  can 
not,  consistently  with  reason,  religion,  and  the  eter 
nal  and  immutable  principles  of  justice,  be  the  prop 
erty  of  man.  We  hold  that  whoever  retains  his 
fellow-man  in  bondage  is  guilty  of  a  grievous 
wrong.  We  hold  that  a  mere  difference  of  com 
plexion  is  no  reason  why  any  man  should  be  deprived 
of  any  of  his  natural  rights  or  subjected  to  any  polit 
ical  disability.  While  we  advance  these  opinions  as 
the  principles  on  which  we  intend  to  act,  we  declare 
that  we  will  not  operate  on  the  existing  relations  of 
society  by  other  than  peaceful  and  lawful  means, 
and  that  we  will  give  no  countenance  to  violence  or 
insurrection." 

There  is  nothing  in  this  fanatical  or  extravagant 
in  the  eyes  of  any  one  who  believes  that  the  negro 
is  a  man.  Yet  it  cost  the  association  the  allegiance 
for  a  time  of  Child,  Loring,  and  Sewall,  two  of 
whom  had  been  the  pecuniary  mainstay  of  the  Lib 
erator.  Those  who  signed,  to  the  apostolic  number 
of  twelve,  were  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  Oliver 


Johnson,  Robert  B.  Hall,  Arnold  Buffum,  William 
J.  Snelling,  John  E.  Fuller,  Moses  Thacher,  Joshua 
Coffin,  Stillman  B.  Newcomb,  Benjamin  C.  Bacon, 
Isaac  Knapp,  and  Henry  K.  Stockton — hardly  any 
of  them,  according  to  Mr.  Johnson,  worth  a  hundred 
dollars.  However,  after  signing  they  stepped  out 
with  glad  hearts  into  the  dark  and  stormy  night. 
The  objects  of  the  society  were  defined  to  be  "to 
endeavor,  by  all  means  sanctioned  by  law,  human 
ity,  and  religion,  to  effect  the  abolition  of  slavery  in 
the  United  States,  to  improve  the  character  and  con 
dition  of  the  free  people  of  color,  to  improve  and  cor 
rect  public  opinion  in  relation  to  their  situation  and 
rights,  and  obtain  for  them  equal  civil  and  political 
rights  and  privileges  with  the  white/'  A  reason 
able  aim,  the  real  equality  of  the  African  with  the 
white  man  in  political  capacity  being  always  pre 
supposed. 

(72) 


VI. 

THE  forces  placed  under  Garrison's  command  by 
the  formation  of  the  New  England  Anti-Slavery  So 
ciety  were  at  once  led  by  him  to  the  attack  of  the 
Colonization  Society,  in  which  he  now  saw  the  dead 
liest  foe  of  his  cause,  though  it  had  at  one  time  en 
gaged  his  sympathy.  The  declared  object  of  the 
Colonization  Society  was  to  found  on  the  coast  of 
Africa  a  colony,  such  as  Liberia  is,  as  an  asylum 
for  negroes  who  had  been  set  free  in  the  South, 
and  at  the  same  time  as  an  experimental  seed-plot 
and  centre  of  African  civilization.  It  is  just,  as 
well  as  charitable,  to  assume  that  the  intentions  of 
the  founders  had  been  sincere  and  good,  though 
Webster  expressed  suspicion  from  the  first.  The 
position  of  a  free  negro  at  the  South  was  abject 
and  hopeless,  while  belief  in  the  necessity  of  sep 
arating  the  races,  which  this  policy  implied,  had, 
as  has  already  been  hinted,  a  stronger  foundation 
than  Garrisonians  were  willing  to  allow.  But  the 
Society  seems  by  this  time  to  have  really  degener 
ated  into  a  safety-valve  for  slavery  and  a  drug  for 

the  conscience  of  the  North.     It  unquestionably  had 

(73) 


sinister  support.  As  a  solution  of  the  question  its 
policy  was  almost  farcical,  since  the  number  of  ne 
groes  whom  it  could  carry  off  was  a  mere  driblet 
compared  with  the  yearly  increase  from  breeding 
and  the  contraband  trade.  Its  great  crime  in  Gar 
rison's  eyes,  however,  was  that  it  treated  the  negro 
as  an  alien,  whose  presence  was  a  calamity  to  him 
self  and  to  the  State,  not  as  an  American  citizen 
under  a  cloud  of  unmerited  oppression  who  ought 
to  be  set  free  and  made  happy  in  the  land  of  his 
birth  or  adoption.  He  assailed  its  doctrines  and  pur 
poses  in  a  pamphlet  deemed  his  masterpiece.  It 
was  certainly  a  strong  point  to  be  able  to  say  that 
of  all  the  officers  of  the  Society  nearly  three-fourths 
were  slave-owners,  yet  not  one  of  them  had  emanci 
pated  a  slave  to  be  sent  to  Liberia ;  that  the  Presi 
dent  was  the  owner  of  a  thousand  slaves,  and  that 
a  former  President  had  offered  a  large  reward  to 
any  one  who  would  capture  a  runaway  female  and 
put  her  into  any  jail  in  the  United  States.  But  it 
was  when  he  came  to  the  assumption  of  the  perpet 
ual  degradation  of  the  negro  that  the  writer's  wrath 
burst  into  flame.  "  The  detestation  of  feeling,  the 
fire  of  moral  indignation,  and  the  agony  of  soul  which 
I  have  felt  kindling  and  swelling  within  me,  in  the 
progress  of  this  review,  under  this  section  reach  the 
acme  of  intensity."  The  doctrine  and  sentiments 

of  the  pamphlet  estranged  so  many  as  nearly  to  kill 

(74) 


the    Liberator,  but    its    sale,  being    large,   brought 
timely  relief  to  the  exchequer. 

Garrison  now  got  himself  deputed  to  England, 
where  the  emissaries  of  the  Society  had  been  enlist 
ing  sympathy  and  support  in  the  name  of  Aboli 
tionism,  and  had  led  astray  even  Clarkson  and  oth 
ers  of  the  elect.  Addressing  colored  meetings  on 
his  road  and  dodging  by  his  movements  persecu 
tors  who  were  on  his  track,  he  made  his  way  to 
New  York  and  sailed  for  England  as  the  represen 
tative  of  American  Abolitionism,  May  2,  1833,  being 
then  not  twenty-eight  years  of  age.  He  found  the 
British  measure  on  the  eve  of  becoming  law.  As 
it  included  compensation  and  apprenticeship,  he  was 
inclined  to  regard  it  with  disdain,  though  he  might 
have  learned  a  lesson  from  its  steadfast  justice,  if 
not  from  its  practical  wisdom.  He  was  heartily  re 
ceived,  and  among  other  attentions  paid  him,  was 
invited  to  breakfast  by  Buxton.  When  he  entered, 
his  host,  instead  of  taking  his  hand  at  once,  scanned 
him  with  a  look  of  surprise,  and  inquired  with  an 
accent  of  doubt  whether  he  had  the  pleasure  of  .ad 
dressing  Mr.  Garrison,  of  Boston,  in  the  United 
States.  Being  told  that  he  had,  he  lifted  up  his 
hands  and  exclaimed,  "  Why,  my  dear  sir,  I  thought 
you  were  a  black  man!  and  I  have  consequently 
invited  this  company  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  to 
be  present  to  welcome  Mr.  Garrison,  the  black  ad- 


vocate  of  emancipation  from  the  United  States  of 
America.55  Garrison  took  this  as  a  high  compli 
ment,  since  it  implied  a  belief  that  no  white 
American  would  plead  as  he  had  done  for  the  slave. 
He  might  further  have  welcomed  the  incident  as 
a  proof  that  the  negro,  in  a  land  where  he  had  not 
borne  the  brand  of  slavery,  was  not  an  object 
of  social  abhorrence.  Garrison  also  had  the  honor 
of  breakfasting  with  Wilberforce,  and  was  deeply 
impressed  by  his  serene  patience  under  bodily  suffer 
ing,  his  silvery  voice,  his  benevolent  smile,  the  look 
of  intellect  in  his  eye,  the  union  of  fluency  and 
modesty  in  his  discourse,  the  exactness  and  ele 
gance  of  his  diction,  the  combination  of  dignity 
with  affability  and  simplicity  in  his  manner.  The 
harmony  of  gentleness  with  energy  and  moral  might 
reminded  Garrison  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles.  The 
frail  and  puny  frame  curled  up  on  a  sofa  struck 
him  as  a  curious  contrast  to  the  colossal  majesty  of 
Daniel  Webster;  and  he  had  yet  to  see  that  in 
Webster's  body  dwelt  a  mighty  intellect  but  not  so 
great  a  soul.  Soon  after  Wilberforce  died,  and  at 
the  end  of  the  august  funeral  procession  at  West 
minster  Abbey,  headed  by  Wellington  and  Pell, 
walked  the  editor  of  the  Liberator. 

Garrison  was  successful  in  his  mission.  He  con 
vinced  the  British  Abolitionists,  if  not  that  the  Col 
onization  Society  was  "the  mystery  of  iniquity,'5 

(76) 


that  its  objects  were  equivocal  and  that  it  was  un 
deserving  of  their  support.  To  this  they  set  their 
hands;  Clarkson  alone,  who  was  blind  and  at  the 
mercy  of  informants,  persisting  in  neutrality  for 
the  time.  The  agent  of  the  Society  was  discom 
fited  and  left  the  field.  Garrison  had  a  successful 
meeting  in  Exeter  Hall,  the  temple  of  Evangelical 
philanthropy,  and  addressed  it  at  great  length. 
Citing  the  denunciation  of  the  American  slavehold  - 
ers  by  CTConnell,  whose  memory  must  always  be 
honored  among  those  of  the  enemies  of  slavery,  he 
said  that  never  was  a  more  just  and  fearless  rebuke 
given  to  a  guilty  nation,  adding  that  whatever  re 
sponsibility  might  attach  to  Great  Britain  for  the 
introduction  of  slavery  into  the  United  States 
(and  the  talk  of  robbery  and  kidnapping  as  things 
that  might  be  entailed,  in  his  opinion  was  precious 
absurdity) ,  from  the  first  moment  in  which  the  people 
of  the  United  States  published  their  Declaration  of 
Independence  to  the  world,  they  became  exclusively 
accountable  for  the  existence  and  continuance  of 
negro  slavery.  O'Connell  had  promised  to  be  at 
the  meeting  and  speak,  but  he  had  forgotten  all 
about  it.  He  was  found  at  a  breakfast,  just  rising 
to  address  the  company.  A  note  of  reminder  hav 
ing  been  slipped  into  his  hand,  he  drove  off  at  once 
to  the  hall,  and,  as  Garrison  said,  "threw  off  his 
magnificent  speech  as  he  threw  off  his  coat."  To 


Garrison's  ear,  invective  against  slavery  was  sure 
to  be  magnificent  if  it  was  full-bodied,  and  for  full- 
bodied  invective  O'Connell  was  the  man.  "The 
American  slave-owners,"  said  the  orator,  "are  the 
basest  of  the  base,  the  most  execrable  of  the  exe 
crable.  I  thank  God  that  upon  the  wings  of  the 
press  the  voice  of  so  humble  an  individual  as  my 
self  will  pass  against  the  western  breeze — that  it 
will  reach  the  rivers,  the  lakes,  the  mountains,  and 
the  glens  of  America- — and  that  the  friends  of  lib 
erty  there  will  sympathize  with  me,  and  rejoice  that 
I  here  tear  down  the  image  of  liberty  from  the  rec 
reant  land  of  America,  and  condemn  her  as  the 
vilest  of  hypocrites,  the  greatest  of  liars."  The 
press  did  carry  these  words  against  the  western 
breeze,  and  they  could  not  fail  to  prepare  for  Gar 
rison  a  warm  reception  on  his  return. 

It  must  be  owned  that  he  was  now,  both  in  point 
of  principle  and  of  policy,  on  somewhat  slippery 
ground.  It  is  incumbent  on  a  reformer  to  fulfil  all 
righteousness,  and  to  render  to  CaBsar  all  things 
that  to-day  belong  to  Caesar,  though  he  may  hope 
that  the  ultimate  effect  of  his  preaching  will  be  the 
dethronement  of  Ca3sar,  and  the  enthronement  of 
a  better  power.  Garrison  avowed  himself,  on  phil 
anthropic  questions  at  least,  a  cosmopolitan;  he 
declared  that  his  country  was  the  world,  and  his 

countrymen  were  all  mankind.     This  was  well ;  but 

(78) 


the  hour  of  cosmopolitanism  had  not  yet  fully  come,j 
and  meantime  it  was  necessary  to  keep  terms  with 
national  sentiment,  not  on  grounds  of  policy  merely, 
hut  hecause  patriotism,  which  could  hardly  he  dis- 
se'vered  from  national  sentiment  or  even  from  na 
tional  pride,  was  a  part  of  the  virtue  of  ordinary 
men.  However,  if  Garrison  was  advancing  too  fast 
or  too  far,  it  was  at  #U  events  on  a  line  on  which,  if 
our  most  generous  hopes  are  fulfilled,  humanity 
would  some  day  overtake  him. 

On  his  return  Garrison  was  received  as  a  traducer 
of  his  country ;  a  meeting  to  organize  an  Anti-Slav 
ery  Society  in  the  city  of  New  York,  for  which  he 
chanced  to  come  in,  was  mohbed,  and  the  Abolition 
ists  were  all  driven  from  the  hall  -except  one  im 
perturbable  Quaker,  who  retained  his  seat  and 
disconcerted  the  invaders  by  his  laconic  serenity. 
A  threatening  mob  beset  the  Liberator  office  at  Bos 
ton.  The  pro-slavery  press  of  course  opened  fire. 
But  Garrison,  in  face  of  the  storm  of  shot,  nailed 
his  colors  to  the  mast.  "  I  speak  the  truth,  pain 
ful,  humiliating,  and  terrible  as  it  is ;  and  because 
I  am  bold  and  faithful  to  do  so,  am  I  to  be  branded 
as  the  calumniator  and  enemy  of  my  country?  If 
to  suffer  sin  upon  my  brother  be  to  hate  him  in  my 
heart,  then  to  suffer  sin  upon  my  country  would  be 
'an  evidence,  not  of  my  love,  but  hatred  of  her. 
Sir,  it  is  because  my  affection  for  her  is  intense  and 


paramount  to  all  selfish  considerations  that  I  do  not 
parley  with  her  crimes.  I  know  that  she  can  neither 
be  truly  happy  nor  prosperous  while  she  continues 
to  manacle  and  brutalize  every  sixth  child  born  on 
her  soil.  Lying  lips  are  speaking  'peace,  peace  to 
her,  but  she  shall  not  see  peace  until  the  tears  of 
her  repentance  shall  have  washed  away  every  stain 
of  blood  from  her  escutcheon. ' ;  "  They, "  concluded 
Garrison,  "were  the  real  traducers  of  the  country, 
who  by  their  practices  were  dishonoring  her  before 
the  world."  This  was  the  true  philosophy  of  the 
matter,  but  a  populace  is  not  philosophic. 

Here  a  bright  ray  of  domestic  happiness  falls  on 
the  dark  and  troubled  scene.  On  September  4,  1834, 
Garrison  was  married  to  Miss  Helen  Benson,  whose 
father  was  a  member  of  the  philanthropic  circle, 
and  who  had  himself  been  first  drawn  to  Garrison 
as  a  philanthropist.  As  soon  as  it  was  known  that 
the  Amalgamationist  was  about  to  be  married,  the 
mouths  of  the  mockers  of  course  were  opened.  They 
were  playfully  informed  in  reply  that  they  would 
soon  be  enabled  to  decide  whether  the  editor  of  the 
Liberator  was  going  to  espouse  a  white  or  a  black 
woman.  The  woman  whom  he  did  espouse  and  in 
whom  he  found  an  excellent  wife,  far  from  resem 
bling  the  "Americans  called  Africans,"  as  the  Abo 
litionists  styled  the  negroes,  was  plump  and  rosy, 
with  blue  eyes  and  fair  brown  hair.  In  justice  to 

(80) 


the  opponents  of  Garrison,  and  to  those  who  have 
inherited  the  desperate  difficulties  of  the  race  prob 
lem,  it  must  be  noted  once  more  that  if  he  was  an 
Amalgamationist  it  was  in  theory  only,  and  that 
amalgamation  lay  nearer  the  root  of  the  whole  ques 
tion  than  he  ever  allowed  himself  to  perceive. 

Hitherto  there  had  been  only  the  New  England 
Society  and  some  othe'r  local  societies.  A  great  step 
in  advance  was  taken  October  29,  1833,  by  the  call 
of  a  convention  for  the  formation  of  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society.  The  call  was  signed  by  Ar 
thur  Tappan,  President,  Joshua  Leavitt,  one  of  the 
Managers,  and  Elizur  Wright,  Jr. ,  Secretary  of  the 
New  York  City  Anti-Slavery  Society.  The  meet 
ing-place  was  Philadelphia,  to  which  in  the  begin 
ning  of  December  the  Abolitionists  made  their  way, 
though  Whittier,  and  perhaps  not  he  alone,  had  to 
contend  with  the  difficulties  of  a  slender  purse.  On 
the  road  Garrison  got  into  conversation  with  a  fel 
low-passenger,  who  did  not  know  him  by  sight,  on 
the  subject  of  slavery.  The  stranger  was  most  fav 
orably  impressed  by  Garrison's  exposition,  and  said 
that  if  all  Abolitionists  were  like  him  there  would 
be  less  opposition  to  the  enterprise.  "But,  sir,  de 
pend  upon  it,  that  hare-brained,  reckless  fanatic, 
Garrison,  will  damage  if  he  does  not  shipwreck  any 
cause."  "Allow  me,  sir,  to  introduce  you  to  Mr. 

Garrison, "said  a  fellow-delegate,  the  Rev. S.  J.  May. 

(81) 


On  the  morning  of  December  the  4th  between  fifty 
and  sixty  delegates,  representing  ten  of  the  twelve 
free  States,  made  their  way,  greeted  as  they  went 
with  abusive  language,  to  Adelphi  Hall,  which  they 
found  guarded  by  the  police.  The  police,  in  spite 
of  the  popular  ferment,  seems  always  to  have  done 
its  duty.  The  assembly  consisted  largely  of  young 
men.  Beriah  Green  was  President  of  the  conven 
tion.  An  attempt  had  been  made  to  get  the  chair 
taken  by  a  Philadelphian  whose  character  would 
give  the  meeting  an  air  of  respectability,  but  of 
course  in  vain.  Garrison  was  deputed  to  draft  a 
Declaration  of  Principles.  This  he  did  between  ten 
at  night  and  eight  in  the  morning,  when  he  was 
found  with  shutters  closed  and  lamp  burning  just 
writing  the  last  paragraph.  We  may  be  sure  that 
the  matter  was  already  beforehand  in  his  mind; 
perhaps  to  a  great  extent  had  taken  form.  The 
declaration  was  accepted  as  he  drew  it,  with  the 
exception  of  a  paragraph  directed  against  his  hated 
enemy,  the  Colonization  Society,  which  was  wisely 
stricken  out  as  a  needless  attack  on  the  dying.  The 
good  Thomas  Shipley  took  exception  to  the  term 
u  man-stealer "  as  applied  indiscriminately  to  the 
slave-owners-,  and,  to  quiet  his  scruples,  the  words 
"  according  to  Scripture"  were  inserted ;  Mr.  Garrison 
objecting  on  the  ground  that  this  would  make  the 
rights  of  man  dependent  upon  a  text.  Mr.  May  says 

(82) 


that  he  never  in  his  life  saw  a  deeper  impression 
made  by  a  document.  "After  the  voice  of  the 
reader  had  ceased,  there  was  a  profound  silence  for 
several  minutes.  Our  hearts  were  in  perfect  unison. 
There  was  but  one  thought  with  us  all.  Either  of 
the  members  could  have  told  what  the  whole  con 
vention  felt.  We  felt  that  the  word  had  just  been 
uttered  which  would  he  mighty,  through  God,  to  the 
pulling  down  of  the  strongholds  of  slavery ."  The 
manifesto  is  admirable  from  Garrison's  point  of  view, 
arid,  given  entire,  it  will  be  a  fair  exposition  of  his 
aims  as  well  as  a  good  specimen  of  his  literary  work. 

DECLARATION  OF  SENTIMENTS. 

The  Convention  assembled  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia  to 
organize  a  National  Anti -Slavery  Society,  promptly  seize  the 
opportunity  to  promulgate  the  following  Declaration  of  Senti 
ments,  as  cherished  by  them  in  relation  to  the  enslavement  of 
one-sixth  portion  of  the  American  people. 

More  than  fifty -seven  years  have  elapsed  since  a  band  of  pa 
triots  convened  in  this  place  to  devise  measures  for  the  deliver 
ance  of  this  country  from  a  foreign  yoke.  The  corner-stone 
upon  which  they  founded  the  Temple  of  Freedom  was  broadly 
this :  "  That  all  men  are  created  equal ;  that  they  are  endowed 
by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights  ;  that  among 
these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness."  At  the 
sound  of  their  trumpet-call,  three  millions  of  people  rose  up  as 
from  the  sleep  of  death  and  rushed  to  the  strife  of  blood  ;  deem 
ing  it  more  glorious  to  die  instantly  as  freemen  than  desirable 
to  live  one  hour  as  slaves.  They  wrere  few  in  number,  poor  in 
resources;  but  the  honest  conviction  that  Truth,  Justice,  and 
Right  were  on  their  side  made  them  invincible. 

We  have  met  together  for  the  achievement  of  an  enterprise 
without  which  that  of  our  fathers  is  incomplete  ;  and  which, 
for  its  magnitude,  solemnity,  and  probable  results  upon  the  des- 

(83) 


tiny  of  the  world,  as  far  transcends  theirs  as  moral  truth  does 
physical  force. 

In  purity  of  motive,  in  earnestness  of  zeal,  in  decision  of 
purpose,  in  intrepidity  of  action,  in  steadfastness  of  faith,  in 
sincerity  of  spirit,  we  would  not  be  inferior  to  them. 

Their  principles  led  them  to  wage  war  against  their  oppres 
sors,  and  to  spill  human  blood  like  water,  in  order  to  be  free. 
Ours  forbid  the  doing  of  evil  that  good  may  come,  and  lead  us 
to  reject,  and  to  entreat  the  oppressed  to  reject,  the  use  of  all 
carnal  weapons  for  deliverance  from  bondage,  relying  solely 
upon  those  which  are  spiritual,  and  mighty  through  God  to  the 
pulling  down  of  strongholds. 

Their  measures  were  physical  resistance — the  marshalling  in 
arms — the  hostile  array — the  .mortal  encounter.  Ours  shall  be 
such  only  as  the  opposition  of  moral  purity  to  moral  corruption 
— the  destruction  of  error  by  the  potency  of  truth — the  overthrow 
of  prejudice  by  the  power  of  love — and  the  abolition  of  slavery 
by  the  spirit  of  repentance. 

Their  grievances,  great  as  they  were,  were  trifling  in  compar 
ison  with  the  wrongs  and  sufferings  of  those  for  whom  we  plead. 
Our  fathers  were  never  slaves — never  bought  and  sold  like  cattle 
— never  shut  out  frorr  the  light  and  knowledge  of  religion — 
never  subjected  to  the  lash  of  brutal  taskmasters. 

But  those  for  whose  emancipation  we  are  striving — constitut 
ing  at  the  present  time  at  least  one  sixth  part  of  our  country 
men — are  recognized  by  law  and  treated  by  their  fellow- beings 
as  marketable  commodities,  as  goods  and  chattels,  as  brute 
beasts ,  are  plundered  daily  of  the  fruits  of  their  toil  without 
redress ;  really  enjoy  no  constitutional  nor  legal  protection  from 
licentious  and  murderous  outrages  upon  their  persons  ;  and  are 
ruthlessly  torn  asunder — the  tender  babe  from  the  arms  of  its 
frantic  mother — the  heart  broken  wife  from  her  weeping  hus 
band — at  the  caprice  or  pleasure  of  irresponsible  tyrants.  For 
the  crime  of  having  a  dark  complexion  they  suffer  the  pangs  of 
hunger,  the  infliction  of  stripes,  the  ignominy  of  brutal  servi 
tude.  They  are  kept  in  heathenish  darkness  by  laws  expressly 
enacted  to  make  their  instruction  a  criminal  offence. 

These  are  the  prominent  circumstances  in  the  condition  of 
more  than  two  millions  of  our  people,  the  proof  of  which  may 
be  found  in  thousands  of  indisputable  facts  and  in  the  laws  of 
the  slave  holding  States. 

Hence  we  maintain— that,  in  view  of  the  civil  and  religious 

(84) 


privileges  of  this  nation,  the  guilt  of  its  oppression  is  unequalled 
by  any  other  on  the  face  of  the  earth ;  and,  therefore,  that  it  is 
l>oimd  to  repent  instantly,  to  undo  the  heavy  burdens,  and  to  let 
the  oppressed  go  free. 

We  further  maintain — that  no  man  has  a  right  to  enslave  or 
imbrute  his  brother — to  hold  or  acknowledge  him,  for  one  mo 
ment,  as  a  piece  of  merchandise — to  keep  back  his  hire  by  fraud 
— or  to  brutalize  his  mind  by  denying  him  the  means  of  intel 
lectual,  social,  and  moral  improvement. 

y^The  right  to  enjoy  liberty  is  inalienable.  To  invade  it  is  to 
usurp  the  prerogative  of  Jehovah.  Every  man  has  a  right  to 
his  own  body — to  the  products  of  his  own  labor — to  the  protec 
tion  of  law— and  to  the  common  advantages  of  society.  It  is 
piracy  to  buy  or  steal  a  native  African,  to  subject  him  to  servi 
tude.  Surely  the  sin  is  as  great  to  enslave  an  American  as  an 
African. 

Therefore  we  believe  and  affirm — that  there  is  no  difference, 
in  principle,  between  the  African  slave  trade  and  American 
slavery : 

That  every  American  citizen  who  retains  a  human  being  in 
involuntary  bondage  as  his  property  is,  according  to  Scripture 
(Exodus  xxi.16),  a  man-stealer 

That  the  slaves  ought  instantly  to  be  set  free  and  brought 
under  the  protection  of  law  : 

That  if  they  had  lived  from  the  time  of  Pharaoh  down  to  the 
present  period,  and  had  been  entailed  through  successive  gener 
ations,  their  right  to  be  free  could  never  have  been  alienated, 
but  their  claims  would  have  constantly  risen  in  solemnity  . 

That  all  those  laws  which  are  now  in  force,  admitting  the 
right  of  slavery,  are  therefore,  before  God,  utterly  null  and 
void  ;  being  an  audacious  usurpation  of  the  Divine  prerogative, 
a  daring  infringement  on  the  law  of  nature,  a  base  overthrow  ! 
of  the  very  foundations  of  the  social  compact,  a  complete 
extinction  of  all  the  relations,  endearments,  and  obligations 
of  mankind,  and  a  presumptuous  transgression  of  all  the  holy 
commandments  ;  and  that  therefore  they  ought  instantly  to  be 
abrogated. 

We  further  believe  and  affirm — that  all  persons  of  color  who 
possess  the  qualifications  which  are  demanded  of  others  ought 
to  be  admitted  forthwith  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  same  privi 
leges  and  the  exercise  of  the  same  prerogatives  as  others ;  and 
that  the  paths  of  preferment,  of  wealth,  and  of  intelligence 

(85) 


should  be  opened  as  widely  to  them  as  to  persons  of  a  white 
complexion. 

We  maintain  that  no  compensation  should  be  given  to  the 
planters  emancipating  their  slaves  : 

Because  it  would  be  a  surrender  of  the  great  fundamental 
principle  that  man  cannot  hold  property  in  man  : 

Because  slavery  is  a  crime,  and  therefore  is  not  an  article  to 
be  sold : 

Because  the  holders  of  slaves  are  not  the  just  proprietors  of 
what  they  claim  ;  freeing  the  slave  is  not  depriving  them  of 
property,  but  restoring  it  to  its  rightful  owner ;  it  is  not  wrong 
ing  the  master,  but  righting  the  slave — restoring  him  to  him 
self  : 

Because  immediate  and  general  emancipation  would  only  de 
stroy  nominal,  not  real,  property  ;  it  would  not  amputate  a  limb 
or  break  a  bone  of  the  slaves,  but,  by  infusing  motives  into 
their  breasts,  would  make  them  doubly  valuable  to  the  masters 
as  free  laborers  •  and 

Because,  if  compensation  is  to  be  given  at  all,  it  should  be" 
given  to  the  outraged  and  guiltless  slaves,  and  not  to  those  who 
have  plundered  and  abused  them. 

We  regard  as  delusive,  cruel,  and  dangerous  any  scheme  of 
expatriation  which  pretends  to  aid,  either  directly  or  indirectly, 
in  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves,  or  to  be  a  substitute  for  the 
immediate  and  total  abolition  of  slavery. 

We  fully  and  unanimously  recognize  the  sovereignty  of  each 
State  to  legislate  exclusively  on  the  subject  of  the  slavery  which 
is  tolerated  within  its  limits ;  we  concede  that  Congress,  under 
the  present  national  compact,  has  no  right  to  interfere  with  any 
of  the  slave  States  in  relation  to  this  momentous  subject : 

But  we  maintain  that  Congress  has  a  right,  and  is  solemnly 
bound,  to  suppress  the  domestic  slave-trade  between  the  several 
States,  and  to  abolish  slavery  in  those  portions  of  our  territory 
which  the  Constitution  has  placed  under  its  exclusive  jurisdic 
tion. 

We  also  maintain  that  there  are,  at  the  present  time,  the 
highest  obligations  resting  upon  the  people  of  the  free  States  to 
remove  slavery  by  moral  and  political  action,  as  prescribed  in 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  They  are  now  living 
under  a  pledge  of  their  tremendous  physical  force,  to  fasten  the 
galling  fetters  of  tyranny  upon  the  limbs  of  millions  in  the 
Southern  States ;  they  are  liable  to  be  called  at  any  moment  to 

(80) 


suppress  a  general  insurrection  of  the  slaves  ;  they  authorize  the 
slave-owner  to  vote  for  three  fifths  of  his  slaves  as  property,  and 
thus  enable  him  to  perpetuate  his  oppression  ;  they  support  a 
standing  army  at  the  South  for  its  protection  ,  and  they  seize 
the  slave  who  has  escaped  into  their  territories,  and  send  him 
back  to  be  tortured  by  an  enraged  master  or  a  brutal  driver. 
This  relation  to  slavery  is  criminal,  and  full  of  danger ;  it  must 
be  broken  up. 

These  are  our  views  and  principles— these  our  designs  and 
measures.     With  entire  confidence  in  the  overruling  justice  of 
God,  we  plant  ourselves  upon  the  Declaration  of  our  Indepen 
dence  and  the  truths  of  Divine  Revelation,  as  upon  the  Ever  < 
lasting  Rock. 

We  shall  organize  Anti-Slavery  Societies,  if  possible,  in  every 
city,  town,  and  village  in  our  land. 

We  shall  send  forth  agents  to  lift  up  the  voice  of  remonstrance, 
of  warning,  of  entreaty,  and  of  rebuke. 

We  shall  circulate,  unsparingly  and  extensively,  anti-slavery 
tracts  and  periodicals. 

We  shall  enlist  the  pulpit  and  the  press  in  the  cause  of  the 
suffering  and  the  dumb. 

We  shall  aim  at  the  purification  of  the  churches  from  all  par 
ticipation  in  the  guilt  of  slavery. 

We  shall  encourage  the  labor  of  freemen  rather  than  that  of 
slaves  by  giving  a  preference  to  their  productions ,  and 

We  shall  spare  no  exertion  nor  means  to  bring  the  whole 
nation  to  speedy  repentance. 

Our  trust  for  victory  is  solely  in  God.  We  may  personally  be 
defeated,  but  our  principles  never !  Truth,  Justice,  Reason,  Hu 
manity,  must  and  will  gloriously  triumph.  Already  a  host  is 
coming  up  to  the  help  of  the  Lord  against  the  mighty,  and  the 
prospect  before  us  is  full  of  encouragement. 

Submitting  this  Declaration  to  the  candid  examination  of  the 
people  of  this  country  and  of  the  friends  of  liberty  throughout 
the  world,  we  hereby  affix  our  signatures  to  it ;  pledging  our 
selves  that,  under  the  guidance  and  by  the  help  of  Almighty 
God.  we  will  do  all  that  in  us  lies,  consistently  with  this  Dec 
laration  of  our  principles,  to  overthrow  the  most  execrable 
system  of  slavery  that  has  ever  been  witnessed  upon  earth  ;  to 
deliver  our  land  from  its  deadliest  curse  ;  to  wipe  out  the  foulest 
stain  that  rests  upon  our  national  escutcheon  ;  and  to  secure  to 
the  colored  population  of  the  United  States  all  the  rights  and 

(87) 


. 

privileges  which  belong  to  them  as  men  and  as  Americans- 
come  what  may  to  our  persons,  our  interests,  or  our  reputations 
— whether  we  live  to  witness  the  triumph  of  Liberty,  Justice, 
and  Humanity,  or  perish  untimely  as  martyrs  in  this  great,  be 
nevolent,  and  holy  cause. 

Done  at  Philadelphia,  the  6th  day  of  December,  A.  D.  1833. 

If  slavery  was  a  wrong  not  less  grievous  than 
taxation  without  representation  on  the  smallest 
scale  and  in  the  mildest  form,  the  second  Philadel 
phia  Declaration  might  fairly  challenge  comparison, 
both  in  importance  and  in  righteousness,  with  the 
first. 

"  To  bring  the  whole  nation  to  speedy  repentance  " 
was  the  special  object  of  this  Convention  and  of  the 
movement  which  it  embodied.  It  was  the  object  of 
no  other  association  or  movement,  and  it  was  the 
one  thing  needful.  In  this  lies  the  value  and  the 
interest  of  the  founder's  life.  Eepentance  there 
could  not  be  without  conviction  of  sin,  nor  could 
there  be  conviction  of  sin  without  bringing  home  its 
sinfulness  in  plain  language  to  the  conscience  of  the 
misdoer.  On  the  subject  of  the  clauses  refusing 
compensation  to  the  slave -owner  and  of  the  argu 
ments  by  which  the  refusal  is  supported,  enough 
has  already  been  said.  Arthur  Tappan  was  made 
president  of  the  Association,  and  Garrison  left  Phil 
adelphia  rejoicing  in  the  work  in  his  hands. 

(88) 


VII. 

A  CRITICAL  step  was  taken  by  the  Abolitionists 
when  George  Thompson,  the  British  Anti-Slavery 
lecturer,  with  whom  Garrison  had  formed  a  close 
alliance  in  England,  was  brought  over  to  the  United 
States  to  assist  in  the  crusade.  Thompson  was  an 
eloquent  as  well  as  an  excellent  man,  and  had  done 
good  service  to  the  cause  in  his  country.  But  not 
only  was  he  a  foreigner,  he  was  one  of  a  nation 
against  which  American  prejudice  was  strong,  and 
the  prejudice  of  the  Irish,  who  formed  a  large  and 
most  violent  element  of  the  pro- slavery  democracy, 
stronger  still.  Emancipation,  it  is  true,  was  the 
cause  of  mankind ;  it  morally  transcended  all  na 
tional  boundaries ;  but  what  is  morally  transcended 
cannot  always  in  practice  be  safely  ignored.  The 
intervention  of  a  Frenchman  in  the  British  strug 
gle  for  abolition  would  certainly  have  kindled  the 
wrath  of  Tories  and  West  Indian  proprietors  to  an 
extraordinary  degree.  After  the  Civil  War,  when 
the  victory  was  won,  Thompson's  services  were  ac 
knowledged  and  his  mission  was  ratified  by  the  rep 
resentatives  of  the  American  people,  who  bestowed 

(89) 


on  him  public  honors.  But  when,  at  the  call  of 
Garrison  and  the  Anti-Slavery  Society,  he  came 
over  as  the  representative  of  British  abolitionism, 
to  help  the  cause  in  America,  he  ran  no  small  risk 
of  causing  an  explosion  which,  besides  its  conse 
quences  to  himself  and  his  party,  might,  had  he  been 
killed  or  seriously  maltreated,  have  set  the  two  gov 
ernments  by  the  ears.  The  arrival  of  the  British 
emissary  and  his  appearance  on  the  Anti-Slavery 
platform,  where  he  did  not  fail  to  show  his  power, 
inflamed  the  popular  wrath  to  fury.  Nor  was  it  the 
wrath  of  the  masses  only  that  was  inflamed,  but  that 
of  the  wealthy,  respectable,  and  orthodox.  Advant 
age  was  taken  of  the  reaction  caused  at  once  by  the 
hateful  intervention  of  the  Englishman  and  by  the 
violence  of  Garrison's  language,  to  concert  a  flank 
movement  in  the  shape  of  a  convention  of  moderates 
to  form  an  American  Union  for  the  Eelief  and  Im 
provement  of  the  Colored  Race.  Privately  it  was 
avowed  that  its  object  was  to  put  down  Garrison 
and  his  friends.  On  the  afternoon  of  August  21, 
1835,  the  social,  political,  religious,  and  intellectual 
chiefs  of  Boston  filled  that  cradle  of  liberty,  Faneuil 
Hall,  with  the  mayor  in  the  chair.  The  resolutions 
arraigned  the  Abolitionists  as  agitators,  who  sought 
to  excite  servile  insurrection  and  to  "scatter  among 
our  Southern  brethren  firebrands,  arrows,  and  death. " 
But  what  galled  most  evidently  was  the  presence  of 

(90) 


"a  certain  notorious  foreign  agent,  an  avowed  em 
issary  sustained  by  foreign  funds,  a  professed  agi 
tator  upon  questions  deeply,  profoundly  political, 
which  lay  at  the  very  foundation  of  our  Union." 
Mr.  Garrison,  from  the  quiet  retreat  of  "Friend 
ship's  Valley,"  the  home  of  his  wife's  father,  where 
he  was  reposing,  sent  to  the  Liberator  what  the 
chroniclers  of  his  life  justly  called  "  unstinted  com 
ments  "  upon  the  speeches  and  speakers  of  Faneuil 
Hall.  "Where  are  you,  sir?l!^thus  he  apostro 
phized  one  of  the  speakers — "In  amicable  compan 
ionship  and  popular  repute  with  thieves  and  adul 
terers;  with  slave-holders,  slaye-dealers  and  slave- 
destroyers;  with  those  who  call  the  beings  whom 
God  created  but  a  little  lower  than  the  angels  things 
and  chattels;  with  the  proscribers  of  the  great  chart 
of  eternal  life ;  with  the  rancorous  enemies  of  the 
friends  of  universal  emancipation;  with  the  dis 
turbers  of  the  public  peace ;  with  the  robbers  of  the 
public  mail ;  with  ruffians  who  insult,  pollute,  and 
lacerate  helpless  women;  and  with  conspirators 
against  the  lives  and  liberties  of  New  England  citi 
zens."  To  the  taunt  that  he  dared  not  go  to  the 
South,  where  his  preaching  was  most  needed,  Gar 
rison  could  always  retort  with  force.  Had  he  not 
published  an  anti-slavery  journal  in  Maryland,  and 
in  Baltimore,  a  den  of  the  domestic  slave-trade? 

Had  he  not  suffered  imprisonment  on  account  of  the 

(91) 


boldness  of  his  denunciations?  Had  he  not  contin 
ued  the  publication  as  long  as  subscribers  could  be 
found?  Did  the  friends  of  Polish  or  Greek  freedom 
in  Boston  make  it  a  point  of  honor  to  go  and  de 
nounce  Eussian .  tyranny  in  the  dominions  of  the 
Czar,  or  Turkish  tyranny  in  the  dominions  of  the 
Sultan?  Did  those  who  used  the  taunt,  he  might 
have  asked,  wish  that  he  should  be  murdered,  and 
that  their  friends  at  the  South  should  be  his  mur 
derers?  His  original  intention,  in  the  abandonment 
of  which  fear  had  no  part,  was  to  bring  out  his 
journal  at  Washington,  where  slavery  prevailed  and 
Southern  fire-eaters  abounded. 

The  appeals  made  at  the  Fanueil  Hall  meeting  to 

the  feeling  against  Thompson  bore  their  fruit.     The 

result  was  a  riot  got  up,  one  of  the  organs  of  the 

party  being  witness,  not  by  a  rabble  but  by  "men  of 

property  and  standing,"  who  had  a  large  interest  at 

stal^e  in  the  community,  and  were  determined,  let 

the  consequences  be  what  they  might,  "  to  put  a  stop 

to   the  impudent,  bullying  conduct  of  the  foreign 

I  vagrant,  Thompson,  and  his  associates  in  mischief!" 

j  Thompson  was  expected  to  speak  at  a  meeting  of  the 

,'  Ladies'  Anti-Slavery  Society.     Fortunately  he  was 

not  there;  had  he  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  mob, 

it  is  certain  that  he  would  have  been  tarred  and 

feathered,  and  not  unlikely  that  he  would  have  been 

lynched.     Missing  their  intended  victim,  the  mob 

(92) 


laid  hands  on  Garrison,  put  him  in  peril  of  his  life, 
tore  his  clothes  off  his  back  and  dragged  him  through 
the  streets  with  a  rope  round  his  body,  evidently  I 
meaning  mischief,  though  cries  arose  to  spare  "  the  / 
American,"  and  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  to  think) 
that  the  mob  intended  murder.  He  was  rescued 
from  the  fangs  of  his  enemies  by  Mayor  Lyman, 
who  saw  no  other  way  of  placing  him  in  safety  than 
committing  him  to  prison,  to  which  he  was  accord 
ingly  consigned,  the  crowd  surging  fiercely  round- 
the  carriage  as  he  went.  It  is  due  to  the  mayor  to 
say  that,  though  he  did  not  do  all  that  ought  to 
have  been  done,  he  seems  to  have  done  the  best  he 
could.  In  the  prison,  much  torn  and  battered,  Gar 
rison  spent  the  night.  On  the  wall  of  his  cell  he 
wrote:  "William  Lloyd  Garrison  was  put  into  this 
cell  on  Wednesday  afternoon,  October  21,  1835,  to 
save  him  from  the  violence  of  a  'respectable  and 
influential '  mob,  who  sought  to  destroy  him  for 
preaching  the  abominable  and  dangerous  doctrine 
that  'all  men  are  created  equal,'  and  that  all 
oppression  is  odious  in  the  sight  of  God.  'Hail, 
Columbia!'  Cheers  for  the  Autocrat  of  Russia  and 
the  Sultan  of  Turkey !  Reader,  let  this  inscription 
remain  till  the  last  slave  in  this  despotic  land  be 
loosed  from  his  fetters."  Thompson  happily  got 
safe  out  of  the  country.  To  some  of  those  who 
denounced  him  in  Fanueil  Hall,  he  might  have 

(93) 


replied  that  he  came  to  America  by  the  same  right 
by  which  they  sent  an  emissary  of  the  Colonization 
Society  to  England. 

Cool  critics  say  that  the  sufferings  and  perils  un 
dergone  by  the  Abolitionists  have  been  overstated, 
as  those  of  martyrs  after  their  canonization  are  apt 
to  be.  That  the  Abolitionists  had  to  run  the  social 
gantlet  cannot  be  denied.  But  they  were  also 
mobbed  in  many  places.  At  New  York,  Lewis  Tap- 
pan's  home  was  sacked,  and  violence  reigned  till  it 
excited  the  alarm  of  the  wealthy  men  at  whose  beck 
it  had  broken  loose.  Thompson  had  stones  and  brick 
bats  flung  at  him,  and  was,  as  we  have  seen,  in  peril 
of  his  life.  An  Anti-Slavery  hall  at  Philadelphia  was 
burned  down  close  to  the  spot  on  which  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  had  been  signed.  We  have 
seen  what  befell  Miss  Crandall.  The  office  of  Bir- 
ney's  paper  was  destroyed  by  a  mob  at  Cincinnati. 
At  Nashville,  Tenn.,  Amos  Dresser,  a  divinity  stu 
dent,  was  publicly  flogged  and  expelled  from  the 
city  for  having  anti-slavery  publications  in  his  trunk. 
Another  Abolitionist  was  tarred  and  feathered,  and 
subjected  to  exposure  which  shortened  his  days. 
At  Alton,  in  Illinois,  Elijah  Lovejoy  lost  his  life  in 
defending  himself  and  a  party  of  his  friends  against 
the  ruffians  by  whom  they  were  besieged.  Pro- 
slavery  justices  of  the  peace  dealt  with  Abolitionists 

as  vagabonds,  and  Emerson  had  reason  for  saying 

(94) 


that  there  was  a  mob  judiciary  as  well  as  a  mob 
legislative.  This  was  Andrew  Jackson's  hour,  and 
the  spirit  of  violence  and  tyranny  was  abroad.  In 
the  South,  men  suspected  of  abolitionism  were 
lynched,  Vigilance  Committees  were  formed,  and 
fanatical  journals  gave  vent  to  threats  of  abduction 
and  assassination  which,  though  no  attempt  was 
ever  made,  or  was  e^er  very  likely  to  be  made,  to 
carry  them  into  effect,  might  well  disturb  a  North 
ern  Abolitionist's  sleep.  At  Charleston  the  Abo 
litionist  matter  was  taken  out  of  the  mails  and 
burned  before  a  great  concourse  of  citizens  in  the 
public  square,  Garrison  and  two  of  his  coadjutors 
being  burned  in  effigy  at  the  same  time ;  while  the 
Jacksonian  Postmaster- General,  Kendall,  told  the 
Charleston  postmaster  that  though  he  could  not 
approve  he  would  not  condemn  his  conduct.  The 
Abolitionists  did  not  brave  what  the  first  Christians 
braved,  but  they  did  brave  a  good  deal. 

Thompson,  as  the  foreigner  who  had  dared  to  in 
terfere  in  this  matter,  figured  in  a  message  of  Pres 
ident  Jackson  to  Congress,  recommending  the  pro 
hibition,  under  severe  penalties,  of  the  circulation 
through  the  mails  of  incendiary  publications  intended 
to  instigate  the  slaves  to  insurrection.  It  is  need 
less  to  repeat  that  no  such  intention  existed,  nor  was 
insurrection  likely  to  be  instigated  by  the  hope 

which  the  publications  bore  with  them  of  peaceable 

(95) 


redemption .  Turner  and  the  slaves  who  rose  with 
him  at  Southampton  against  the  cruelty  of  their 
masters,  we  may  be  sure,  had  not  been  reading 
Garrisonian  publications.  This,  like  ths  struggle 
to  prevent  the  presentation  of  petitions  against  slav 
ery  in  Congress,  and  the  threats  of  putting  the  com 
mon  law  in  motion  against  the  Abolitionists,  was 
an  attempt  to  gag  freedom  of  opinion.  Whether 
opinion  should  be  free  thenceforth,  then  became  a 
momentous  though  collateral  issue,  and  to  the  ad 
vantage  of  the  Garrisonian  s;  for  the  Northern 
people,  let  it  be  said  once  more,  were  still  loyal  at 
heart  in  their  allegiance  to  a  principle  which  is  the 

greatest  and  clearest  gain  of  our  modern  civilization. 

(96) 


VIII. 

BEING  now  (183$)  leader  as  well  as  editor,  and 
by  help  of  the  society  partly  released  from  the  shac 
kles  of  editorship,  Garrison  went  forth  as  a  travelling 
missionary  and  took  the  platform.  He  had  not  the 
physical  powers  of  a  great  platform  speaker,  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  always  impressive,  and  if  the 
specimens  of  his  oratory  which  we  have  before  us 
were  delivered  without  notes,  he  had  the  mental 
gifts  of  the  orator  in  liberal  measure.  By  Sumner, 
at  a  later  period,  his  speaking  was  compared  to  a 
rain  of  fire ;  and  by  Lowell,  a  better  judge  of  taste 
than  Sumner,  it  was  highly  praised.  He  seems 
also  to  have  had  perfect  self-possession  on  the  plat 
form,  even  amid  the  most  furious  storms,  though 
his  temperament  was  nervous,  and  he  sat  paralyzed 
in  a  carriage  while  a  restive  horse  was  backing  him 
to  destruction.  His  experiences  in  his  tours  were 
of  course  varied.  In  one  place  he  was  received 
with  sympathy,  in  another  with  howls,  and  perhaps 
with  rotten  eggs.  But  he  is  always  cheery,  even 
when  he  has  to  contend  with  sickness  as  well  as  with 
a  froward  generation,  and  you  see  that  he  heartily 

enjoys  scenery  and  incident  as  he  goes  along. 

(97) 


Between  the  efforts  of  Thompson  and  Garrison, 
with  the  aid  of  such  backers  as  Oliver  Johnson  and 
Samuel  J.  May,  the  movement  bore  fruit  apace. 
Thirteen  hundred  anti-slavery  societies  were  pres 
ently  spread  over  the  Northern  States.  Important 
recruits  came  into  the  Abolition  camp.  Among 
them  was  the  able,  excellent,  and  very  wealthy  Ger- 
rit  Smith,  whose  accession  was  the  more  creditable 
to  him  because  Garrison,  with  inflexible  severity, 
censured  his  course  in  the  very  article  of  conversion. 
Among  them  also  were  James  Russell  Lowell  and 
Edward  Quincy.  But  the  most  notable  was  Wen 
dell  Phillips,  whose  witness  was  the  more  striking 
because  he  was  a  scion  of  Bostonian  wealth  and 
aristocracy,  while  his  eloquence,  a  unique  combina 
tion  of  vehemence  and  fervor  with  grace,  polish, 
and  persuasiveness,  would  have  made  the  fortune 
of  any  cause.  The  orator  in  him  was  revealed  at 
an  indignation  meeting  called  at  Fanueil  Hall  to 
denounce  the  killing  of  Lovejoy,  the  Abolitionist, 
at  Alton.  Attorney-General  Austin,  a  pro-slavery 
man,  there  excused  the  Alton  riot  by  the  example 
of  the  Boston  tea  riot,  upon  which  Wendell  Phillips 
sprang  to  his  feet  and  retorted :  "  Sir,  when  I  heard 
the  gentleman  lay  down  principles  which  place  the 
rioters,  incendiaries,  and  murderers  of  Mount  Ben 
edict  [the  scene  of  an  an ti- Catholic  outrage]  and 
Alton  side  by  side  with  Otis  and  Hancock,  with 

(98) 


Quincy  and  Adams,  I  thought  those  pictured  lips 
[pointing  to  the  portraits  in  the  hall]  would  have 
broken  into  voice  to  rebuke  the  recreant  American — 
the  slanderer  of  the  dead .  The  gentleman  said  that 
he  should  sink  into  insignificance  if  he  dared  to 
gainsay  the  principles  of  these  resolutions.  Sir,  for 
the  sentiments  he  has  uttered,  on  soil  consecrated 
by  the  prayers  of  Puritans  and  the  blood  of  patri 
ots,  the  earth  should  have  yawned  and  swallowed 
him  up!"  There  were  points,  however,  in  the  char 
acter  of  this  highly-gifted  man  which  made  his 
accession  in  the  end  not  unalloyed  gain  to  the  cause. 
Ellis  Gray  Loring,  a  lawyer  of  mark,  bearer  of  a 
name  afterward  honorably  known  to  patriots  in 
connection  with  the  Civil  War,  had  enlisted  from 
the  beginning. 

Boston,  her  plutocracy  strangely  allied  with  her 
mob,  remained  flint-hearted.  Not  a  church  or  hall 
for  an  anti-slavery  meeting  could  be  had  there, 
and  after  nineteen  rebuffs  the  society  had  to  meet 
over  a  stable.  But  the  State  had  begun  to  be  of  a 
different  mind  from  the  city,  and  an  application  to 
the  legislature  for  the  use  of  the  Hall  of  Represent 
atives  was  granted  without  debate,  though  not 
without  a  nearly  successful  attempt  to  revoke  the 
concession. 

There  was  plenty  of  work  for  the  moral   force 

which  had  thus  been  generated  to  do.     There  was 

(99) 


no  danger  of  its  energy  being  wasted,  as  the  energy 
of  such  movements  sometimes  is,  for  want  of  a  re 
sisting  medium,  like  gunpowder  exploded  in  the  open 
air ;  for  the  South  was  thoroughly  roused  and  was 
acting  on  the  offensive,  seeing  that  in  acting  on  the 
offensive  lay  her  only  chance  of  safety.  Nor  was  it 
to  mere  safety  that  she  now  aspired,  but  to  exten 
sion  and  dominion.  The  Garrisonians  were  called 
upon  to  combat  legislative  movements,  directed  by 
the  South  and  her  henchmen  in  the  North  against 
freedom  of  speech ;  to  vindicate  in  the  courts  the 
right  of  slaves  brought  North  to  their  liberty,  and 
of  fugitives  claimed  as  slaves  to  the  ordinary  safe 
guards  on  their  trial ;  to  ply  Congress  with  petitions 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Colum  - 
bia ;  to  oppose  the  admission  of  new  Slave  States 
into  the  union,  and  the  efforts  of  Southern  filibusters 
to  wrest  Texas  from  Mexico  and  annex  her  to  the 
realm  of  slavery.  And  the  treatment  of  the  colored 
seamen  in  Southern  ports,  the  tampering  with  the 
mails,  and  the  offer  of  Southern  legislatures  of 
rewards  for  the  apprehension  of  Garrison,  which 
looked  so  like  setting  a  price  upon  his  head.  Gov 
ernor  Everett,  always  zealous  in  the  cause  of  Slav 
ery,  proposed  to  put  the  common  law  in  force 
against  the  Abolitionists,  and  the  Garrisonians  were 
heard  before  a  Committee  of  the  Legislature  in  bar 

of  such  a  proceeding. 

(100) 


Garrison,  however,  while  he  saw  with  pleasure 
the  influence  which  the  growing  strength  of  the 
Abolitionist  vote  was  beginning  to  exercise  on  pol 
iticians,  steadfastly  refused  to  give  his  movement 
the  form  of  a  political  party.  [There  his  moral  in 
sight  and  his  personal  disinterestedness  stood  him 
and  his  cause  in  good  stead.  He  said  that  if  Abo 
litionism  once  made  k  political  party,  it  must  be  like 
other  political  parties.  It  must  in  the  first  place, 
like  them,  have  its  machinery,  costly  as  well  as  evil. 
Then  it  would  lose  its  character  for  disinterested 
ness:  unprincipled  aspirants  would  swarm  to  it, 
making  flaming  Anti- Slavery  pretensions  but  seek 
ing  loaves  and  fishes.  Its  principles  would  become  a 
marketable  commodity.  Its  leaders,  instead  of  being 
champions  of  righteousness  and  preachers  of  na 
tional  repentance,  would  thenceforth  be  candidates 
for  the  Presidency  or  for  Cabinet  offices  and  the 
patronage  connected  with  them.  Other  issues  would 
for  the  sake  of  votes  be  mingled  with  Abolition,  and 
would  very  likely  choke  it.  In  a  purely  moral  cause 
one  might  put  to  flight  a  thousand ;  but  the  success 
or  defeat  of  a  political  party  was  a  mere  question  of 
numbers.  In  this  Garrison  differed  from  Birney. 
The  name  of  Birney  is  written  in  light  as  a  cham 
pion  of  Emancipation.  Originally  a  slave-owner, 
he  emancipated  his  slaves.  He  then  devoted  his 

own  life  to  the  advocacy  of  emancipation,  facing 

(101) 


Ksome  violence  and  a  great  deal  of  hatred  and  slan- 
\der,  which  to  a  man  in  his  social  position  would  be 
not  less  hard  to  endure  than  violence  itself.  Not 
unnaturally,  though  it  is  conceived  wrongly,  he 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  to  bring  his  force  di 
rectly  to  bear  on  national  politics  was  the  best  way 
of  accomplishing  his  object,  and  that  this,  under  a 
system  of  party  government,  could  only  be  done  by 
organizing  a  party.  He  accordingly  joined  in  or 
ganizing  the  Liberty  party,  and  was  twice  nomina 
ted  by  it  for  the  Presidency — in  1840,  and  again  in. 
1844,  against  Polk,  a  thorough -going  upholder  of 
Slavery,  and  Clay,  the  man  of  compromise.  His 
character  is  the  guarantee  that  no  personal  ambition 
mingled  with  his  motives  for  accepting  the  nomi 
nation.  The  result,  however,  confirmed  Garrison's 
judgment.  Birney  polled  just  enough  votes  to  de 
feat  Clay  and  throw  the  government  directly  into 
the  hands  of  Slavery.  This  was  no  gain,  though 
many  tears  were  wasted  over  the  defeat  of  Clay, 
who  had  no  moral  hatred  of  slavery,  and  was  ready 
to  compromise  with  it  on  almost  any  terms  rather 
than  risk  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  Chance  of 
success  for  Birney 's  party  there  had  never  been,  and 
it  is  seldom  that  a  cause  can  be  served  by  rushing 
upon  assured  defeat,  while  the  bitter  estrangement 
of  all  Clay  ?s  supporters  was  the  necessary  penalty 

of  an  attempt  which  had  deprived  their  idol  of  the 

(102) 


election.  The  experiment  is  instructive  to  all  re 
formers  who  are  tempted  to  organize  a  new  party. 
Even  success  would  he  disastrous,  inasmuch  as  it 
would  entail  the  necessity  of  a  number  of  appoint 
ments  for  which  there  would  not  be  fit  men,  would 
call  forth  a  swarm  of  office-seekers,  and  would  bur 
den  the  particular  reform  with  a  multitude  of  ques 
tions  entirely  foreign  to  it  and  pertaining  to  the 
general  policy  of  the  State. 

"Whereas  the  American  Church" — so  ran  a  mo 
tion  brought  forward  at  an  Anti-Slavery  convention 
by  Mr.  Garrison — "  with  the  exception  of  some  of  its 
smaller  branches,  has  given  its  undisguised  sanction 
and  support  to  the  system  of  American  Slavery,  in 
the  following  among  other  ways,  (1)  by  profound 
silence  on  the  sin  of  slave-holding,  (2)  by  tolerating 
slave-bidding,  slave-trading  and  slave-holding  in  its 
ministers  and  members,  (3)  by  receiving  the  avails 
of  the  traffic  in  slaves  and  the  souls  of  men  into  the 
treasuries  of  its  different  benevolent  institutions, 
and  (4)  by  its  indifference  and  opposition  to  the  Anti- 
Slavery  enterprise — therefore  be  it  resolved,  that  the 
Church  ought  not  to  be  regarded  and  treated  as  the 
Church  of  Christ,  but  as  the  foe  of  freedom,  human 
ity,  and  pure  religion,  so  long  as  it  occupies  its 
present  position."  This  is  a  severe  indictment,  con 
cluding  with  a  severe  sentence.  Its  averments  have 
been  contested,  but  seem  on  the  whole  to  have  been 

(103) 


made  good.  Gerrit  Smith,  a  moderate  man,  spoke 
not  less  decidedly,  though  less  vehemently,  than  Gar 
rison  on  the  subject.  Channing,  with  all  his  desire 
to  preserve  charity  and  avoid  extremes,  could  not 
defend  the  conduct  of  the  churches.  Their  unchris 
tian  refusal  to  treat  the  negro  as  a  Christian  brother 
and  fellow -worshipper  cannot  possibly  be  denied. 
In  the  cases  of  the  Koman  Catholic  and  the  Episco 
pal  churches,  this  behavior  can  hardly  be  ascribed 
to  cowardice,  since  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether 
either  of  them  was  at  heart  opposed  to  slavery.  The 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  it  is  believed,  never  put 
forth  her  power  against  slavery  in  Cuba,  where  it 
prevailed  in  its  worst  form,  or  even  did  much  for 
the  spiritual  elevation  of  the  slave ;  nor  more  did  she 
in  Brazil  and  in  the  South  American  republics,  when 
slavery  existed  there  and  she  had  everything  her 
own  way.  The  Koman  Catholic  Bishop  Hughes 
took  up  his  pen  in  defence  of  the  institution.  More 
over,  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
were  Irish,  the  bitter  haters  and  contemn ers  of  the 
negro.  Of  the  loyalty  of  the  whole  Episcopal  Church 
to  slavery,  Calhoun  could  speak  with  confidence, 
and  he  seems  not  to  have  been  far  wrong.  Bishop 
Coxe,  of  Western  New  York,  was  at  a  later  day 
one  of  the  few  decided  opponents  of  slavery  among 
the  leaders  of  a  Church  which,  socially  as  well  as 
ecclesiastically  conservative,  was  the  asylum  of  Cop- 

(104) 


perheads  during  the  Civil  War.  In  England  Epis 
copalians  of  the  Evangelical  section,  such  as  Wil- 
berforce,  had  played  a  leading  part  in  Abolition; 
but  the  High  Church  section,  which  was  also  Tory, 
had  been  for  the  most  part  actively  or  passively  on 
the  other  side.  Richard  Hurrell  Froude,  a  good 
representative  of  High  Church  feeling,  in  part  of 
his  diary  relating  to  the  West  Indies,  speaks  of 
"the  nigger"  and  of  "Anti-Slavery  rant"  with  a 
Virginian  air.  But  the  Protestant  Churches,  the 
Methodists,  the  Baptists,  the  Presbyterians,  must  be 
held  to  have  been  sinning  against  light.  They  prac 
tically  admitted  it  themselves  when,  the  South  hav 
ing  seceded,  and  the  social  pressure  under  which 
they  had  bowed  their  heads  to  Baal  having  been 
removed,  they  passed  at  once  to  the  Ant i- Slavery 
and  Unionist  side.  That  they  were  maintaining  a 
general  code  of  Christian  morality  which,  when  the 
social  thraldom  was  at  an  end,  would  extend  its  in 
fluence  to  the  subject  of  slavery  is  true,  but  is  hardly 
an  answer  to  the  charge  of  apostasy  on  the  great 
moral  question  of  the  day;  nor  were  ministers  likely 
to  produce  much  effect  by  dilating  on  the  sins  of 
the  Canaanites  or  the  Pharisees  when  it  was  plain, 
as  it  must  have  been  even  to  the  slave-traders  of 
their  congregations,  that  with  regard  to  the  most 
flagrant  sin  of  their  own  generation  they  dared  not 
speak  the  truth.  The  fear  of  a  rupture  with  their 

(105) 


Southern  branches,  which  were  hopelessly  bound  up 
with  slavery,  furnishes  perhaps  a  sounder  excuse 
for  the  conduct  of  the  Northern  Churches,  though  it 
is  difficult  to  understand  how  any  Christian  society 
can  have  highly  valued  its  connection  with  clergy 
men  who  promiscuously  advertised  for  sale  horses, 
wagons,  cattle,  and  African  Christians.  The  Meth 
odist  Church,  it  might  be  supposed,  would  be  the 
least  plutocratic,  and  we  seem  to  sound  the  depths 
of  the  fall  when  we  learn  that  the  Methodist  Gen 
eral  Conference  at  Cincinnati  repelled  with  con 
tumely  a  mild  reprobation  of  slavery  transmitted 
by  the  Wesley  an  Methodists  of  England,  arid  that 
thirty  Methodist  ministers  went  to  compliment  Web 
ster  after  the  speech  which  numbered  him  with  the 
apostates.  The  refusal  of  the  Quakers,  the  great 
philanthropic  sect,  to  help  the  slave  was  perhaps  even 
more  disappointing,  but  the  Quakers  w^ere  a  com 
mercial  as  well  as  a  philanthropic  body.  Churches 
as  well  as  the  spiritual  man  have  their  foundations 
in  the  dust.  They  depend  on  the  purses  of  the  con 
gregation,  and  they  have  trustees  as  well  as  minis 
ters.  Sometimes  in  the  course  of  Garrison's  history 
we  see  the  minister  willing  to  allow"  the  Liberator 
the  use  of  a  church,  but  forbidden  by  the  trustees. 
The  Primitive  Christians,  a  society  consisting  of  poor 
men,  having  all  things  in  common  and  out  of  the 
pale  of  respectability,  might  set  at  defiance  the  so- 

(106) 


rial  sentiment  of  their  age.  But  the  American 
Churches  were  segments  of  American  society,  which, 
allowing  the  highest  assignable  influence  to  the  pew, 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  be  actuated  in  its  seg 
ments  by  motives  very  different  from  those  by  which 
it  was  actuated  in  the  mass. 

The  Bible  sanctioned  slavery.  This  could  not  be 
denied.  Nor  on  that  tesue  could  Archbishop  Hughes, 
who  maintained  the  affirmative,  fail  to  score  a  point. 
The  true  answer  with  which  the  Abolitionists,  not 
being  historical  critics,  were  hardly  prepared,  was 
that  the  Bible,  though  it  sanctioned  slavery,  did 
not  sanction  American  slavery.  What  it  sanctioned, 
or  at  least  recognized,  was  primeval  slavery,  which, 
like  other  features  of  primeval  society,  extended  to 
the  Hebrew  polity  as  well  as  to  the  polities  of  other 
races.  The  slave  code  of  the  Pentateuch  is  remark 
able,  compared  with  the  other  slave  codes  of  anti 
quity,  not  for  its  stringency,  but  for  its  mildness  and 
the  tendency  which  it  shows  to  limit  the  power  of 
the  master  over  the  slave ;  so  much  so,  that  it  might 
almost  have  been  deemed  by  the  Abolitionists  the 
work  of  their  precursors  in  Pentateuch ic  days.  The 
New  Testament  recognized  slavery  in  the  same  man 
ner  as  it  recognized  all  the  political  and  social  in 
stitutions  of  the  day,  the  mission  of  Christianity 
not  being  revolution,  but  the  changes  in  the  heart 

from  which  all  other  beneficial  changes  in  the  end 

(107) 


would  flow.  The  proclamation  of  the  universal 
fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man 
was  morally  the  death -knell  of  slavery.  Paul  sent 
back  Onesimus  to  Philemon ;  but  it  was  with  the 
injunction  to  receive  him  as  a  brother  beloved  and 
as  Paul  himself.  Abolitionists  might  have  been 
willing  to  let  the  Southern  slave-owner  have  back 
his  runaways  on  those  terms. 

Only  the  irrational  Bibliolator,  therefore,  could  im 
agine  that  American  slavery  had  the  Bible  on  its 
side.  But  irrational  Bibliolatry  still  prevailed.  In 
the  South,  where  it  was  seconded  by  interest,  it  had 
complete  possession  of  the  popular  conscience. 
"  Stonewall "  Jackson  appears  to  have  been  a  very 
religious  man,  fighting  as  he  thought  in  defence  of 
a  divine  ordinance,  and  at  the  same  time  in  fulfil 
ment  of  the  prophecy  that  Ham  should  be  a  ser 
vant  in  the  tents  of  his  brethren.  One  of  Crom 
well's  soldiers  would  probably  have  done  the  same. 
He  would  have  kept  the  negro  in  bondage  as  he 
would  have  smitten  any  one  whom  he  identified  with 
the  Canaanite,  and  hewed  any  one  whom  he  iden 
tified  with  Agag  in  pieces  before  the  Lord.  Belief 
in  the  unqualified  inspiration  of  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  permanency  of  its  precepts  has  more  than 
once  made  wild  work  with  morality. 

(108) 


IX. 


GARRISON  had  been  a  more  than  orthodox  Baptist 
and  a  regular  church-goer.  He  had  looked  to  the 
churches  as  the  appointed  instruments  for  bringing 
the  nation  to  a  right  mind.  Bitter  was  his  dis 
appointment.  He  never  did  anything  by  halves. 
He  not  only  withdrew  his  confidence  from  the 
churches,  but  violently  broke  with  them  and  de 
nounced  them  without  measure.  They  were  "  cages 
of  unclean  birds  and  synagogues  of  Satan."  As 
to  the  clergy,  Christianity  indignantly  rejected 
their  sanctimonious  pretensions;  they  were  hire 
lings  and  blind  leaders  of  the  blind,  dumb  dogs  and 
spiritual  popes;  they  loved  the  fleece  better  than 
the  flock,  and  were  mighty  hindrances  to  the  march 
of  human  freedom  and  the  enfranchisement  of  the 
souls  of  men.  Even  Charming  was  treated  with 
scant  respect,  though  he  wrote  nobly  against  slav 
ery,  and  went  so  far  with  Garrison  as  to  say  that  it 
was  better  that  the  Union  should  be  dissolved  than 
that  Texas  should  be  received  into  it  as  a  Slave  State, 
while  his  greatness  as  a  moral  teacher  could  not  be 
denied,  and  his  hesitation  (when  he  did  hesitate) 

(109) 


was  evidently  sincere.  Channing  apparently  dis 
liked  organized  agitation,  preferring  to  rely  on  in 
dividual  conviction.  It  has  been  truly  said  that 
men  differ  as  much  in  their  spiritual  as  in  their 
physical  physiognomies,  and  the  spiritual  physiog 
nomy  of  Channing  was  freedom. 

Not  only  did  Garrison  shake  the  dust  off  his  feet 
against  the  churches,  but  he  was  led  greatly  to 
change  his  views  as  to  the  authority  of  the  Bible, 
to  which  the  churches  appealed  with  apparent  force 
as  a  warrant  for  connivance  at  slavery.  The  his 
torical  view  of  the  question  had  not  presented  itself 
to  his  mind,  and  to  him  it  was  inconceivable  that 
God  should  have  sanctioned  or  permitted  at  one 
stage  in  the  education  of  the  race  what  was  evil  at 
another  stage.  A  religious  man — an  intensely  relig 
ious  man — he  continued  to  be.  He  continued  also 
to  love  the  Bible  and  to  make  a  constant  use  of  its 
language  in  enforcing  moral  truth.  In  this  no 
Puritan  could  exceed  him.  But  he  bade  farewell 
to  tradition,  to  authority,  to  inspiration.  Here  let 
him  speak  for  himself,  as  he  speaks  well : 

"  Of  the  millions  who  profess  to  believe  in  the  Bible  as  the  in 
spired  word  of  God,  how  few  there  are  who  have  had  the  wish 
or  the  courage  to  know  on  what  ground  they  have  formed  their 
opinion  !  They  have  been  taught  that  to  allow  a  doubt  to  arise 
in  their  minds  on  this  point  would  be  sacrilegious  and  to  put 
in  peril  their  salvation.  They  must  believe  in  the  plenary  in 
spiration  of  the  'sacred  volume  '  or  they  are  'infidels  '  who  will 
justly  deserve  to  be  '  cast  into  the  lake  of  fire  and  brimstone. ' 

(110) 


Imposture  may  always  be  suspected  when  reason  is  commanded 
to  abdicate  the  throne ;  when  investigation  is  made  a  criminal 
act ;  when  the  bodies  or  spirits  of  men  are  threatened  with  pains 
and  penalties  if  they  do  not  subscribe  to  the  popular  belief ; 
when  appeals  are  made  to  human  credulity,  and  not  to  the  un 
derstanding. 

"  Now,  nothing  can  be  more  consonant  to  reason  than  that  the 
more  valuable  a  thing  is  the  more  it  will  bear  to  be  examined. 
If  the  Bible  be,  from  Genesis  to  Revelation,  divinely  inspired, 
its  warmest  partisans  need  not  be  concerned  as  to  its  fate.  It  is 
to  be  examined  with  the  s"a»me  freedom  as  any  other  book,  and 
taken  precisely  for  what  it  is  worth.  It  must  stand  or  fall  on 
its  own  inherent  qualities,  like  any  other  volume.  To  know 
what  it  teaches,  men  must  not  stultify  themselves,  nor  be  made 
irrational  by  a  blind  homage.  Their  reason  must  be  absolute  in 
judgment  and  act  freely,  or  they  cannot  know  the  truth.  They 
are  not  to  object  to  what  is  simply  incomprehensible — because 
no  man  can  comprehend  how  it  is  that  the  sun  gives  light  or 
the  acorn  produces  the  oak ;  but  what  is  clearly  monstrous  or 
absurd  or  impossible  cannot  be  endorsed  by  reason,  and  can 
never  properly  be  made  a  test  of  religious  faith  or  an  evidence 
of  moral  character. 

"To  say  that  everything  contained  within  the  lids  of  the  Bible 
is  divinely  inspired,  and  to  insist  upon  the  dogma  as  funda 
mentally  important,  is  to  give  utterance  to  a  bold  fiction  and 
to  require  the  suspension  of  the  reasoning  faculties.  To  say  that 
everything  in  the  Bible  is  to  be  believed  simply  because  it  is 
found  in  that  volume  is  equally  absurd  and  pernicious.  It  is 
the  province  of  reason  to  'search  the  Scriptures  '  and  determine 
what  in  them  is  true  and  what  false — what  is  probable  and  what 
incredible — what  is  compatible  with  the  happiness  of  mankind, 
and  what  ought  to  be  rejected  as  an  example  or  rule  of  action— 
what  is  the  letter  that  killeth,  and  what  the  spirit  that  maketh 
alive.  When  the  various  books  of  the  Bible  were  written,  or  by 
whom  they  were  written,  no  man  living  can  tell.  This  is  purely 
a  matter  of  conjecture ;  and  as  conjecture  is  not  certainty,  it 
ceases  to  be  authoritative.  Nor  is  it  of  vast  consequence,  in 
the  eye  of  reason,  whether  they  to  whom  the  Bible  is  ascribed 
wrote  it  or  not ;  whether  Paul  was  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews,  or  any  other  Epistle  which  is  attributed  to  him ; 
whether  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  or  Joshua  the  history  of 
his  own  exploits,  or  David  the  Psalms,  or  Solomon  the  Prov- 

(111) 


erbs ;  or  whether  the  real  authors  were  some  unknown  persons. 
'What  is  writ  is  writ, '  and  it  must  stand  or  fall  by  the  test  of 
just  criticism,  by  its  reasonableness  and  utility,  by  the  proba 
bilities  of  the  case,  by  historical  confirmation,  by  human  expe 
rience  and  observation,  by  the  facts  of  science,  by  the  intuition 
of  the  spirit.  Truth  is  older  than  any  parchment,  and  would 
still  exist  though  a  universal  conflagration  should  consume  all 
the  books  in  the  world.  To  discard  a  portion  of  Scripture  is 
not  necessarily  to  reject  the  truth,  but  may  be  the  highest  evi 
dence  that  one  can  give  of  his  love  of  truth. " 

Thus,  in  the  eyes  of  the  orthodox,  Garrison  be 
came  an  "infidel,"  and  was  thenceforth  branded  by 
that  name.  Heterodox  he  certainly  did  become, 
though  it  must  be  repeated  he  remained  intensely 
religious,  and  to  compare  him  to  the  Jacobins  was 
absurd.  The  Bible  henceforth  to  him,  though  an 
infinitely  precious,  was  not  an  inspired,  book;  the 
House  of  God  was  "nothing  but  mere  ordinary 
brick  and  mortar,  "the  Sabbath  was  like  other  days, 
and  the  office  of  a  clergyman  was  "one  which  it 
was  scarcely  possible  for  any  man  to  fill  without 
loss  of  independence  or  spiritual  detriment  "  "The 
infidelity  of  the  Anti-Slavery  movement, "  said  Gar 
rison's  sworn  brother-in-arms,  Samuel  May,  Jr., 
"consists  in  this  simple  thing,  that  it  has  out 
stripped  the  churches  of  the  land  in  the  practical 
application  of  Christianity  to  the  wants,  wrongs  and 
oppressions  of  our  own  age  and  our  own  country." 
This,  it  is  true,  was  the  original  cause,  but  it  was 
not  the  limit  of  the  separation.  Garrison  had  also 
been  a  strict  Sabbatarian,  but,  with  other  ecclesias- 


tical  ordinances,  he  renounced  the  Sabbath.  The 
churches  had  denounced  the  holding  of  Abolitionist 
meetings  on  that  day. 

Another  novelty  which  Garrison  embraced  was 
Woman's  Eights.  He  had  found  woman  very  help 
ful  to  him  in  Anti-Slavery  work.  Nor  could  any 
thing  be  more  reasonable  than  that  women  should 
take  an  active  part  in  a  great  movement  of  social 
reform,  and  one  which  in  certain  aspects  specially 
touched  the  interests  and  appealed  to  the  hearts  of 
their  sex.  This  they  might  do  in  what  all  the  world 
would  allow  to  be  a  womanly  way,  as  women  in  a 
womanly  way  had  played  an  illustrious  part  in  the 
foundation  of  Christianity.  But  it  was  a  wide  step 
from  this  to  the  convention,  and  a  wider  step  to  the 
platform.  When  Garrison's  female  helpmates,  Ab- 
by  Kelley  and  the  Grimkes,  took  those  steps  they 
shocked  a  sentiment  which  was  deeply  rooted,  and 
which  they  could  not  expect  to  be  changed  in  a  day. 
It  might  also  be  naturally  felt  that,  while  mob  vio 
lence  was  abroad,  it  was  not  delicate  or  even  quite 
manly  to  expose  women  to  the  chances  of  such  a 
fray.  Garrison  as  usual  went  to  the  extreme  length 
of  his  opinion,  and  asserted  not  only  the  right  of 
women  to  take  the  moral  and  social  platform,  but 
the  political  equality  of  the  sexes — a  doctrine  for 
which  the  world  was  very  far  from  being  prepared 

then,  even  if  it  is  prepared  now.    The  Grimke  sisters, 

(113) 


Lucretia  Mott,and  Abby  Kelley,  appear  by  their  suc 
cess  as  speakers  to  have  justified  Garrison's  faith  in 
the  charms  of  female  eloquence.  Yet  few  will  con 
tend  that  the  products  of  the  female  platform  have 
been  so  entirely  lovely  as  to  stamp  all  gainsayers 
with  bigotry.  A  philanthropic  but  insane  woman 
possessed  with  some  fantastic  notion  of  liberty  was 
in  the  habit  of  talking  at  Anti-Slavery  meetings 
in  defiance  of  the  authority  of  the  Chair.  The 
Chair  having  on  one  occasion  ordered  her  at  last 
to  be  removed,  she  was  borne  out  by  Wendell  Phil 
lips  and  two  others,  male  members  of  the  conven 
tion.  "  I  am  better  off,"  she  cried,  "  than  my  Lord : 
he  had  only  one  ass  to  ride  upon,  I  have  three." 
Garrison  had  a  keen  sense  of  humor.  We  may  be 
sure  that  he  smiled  at  such  incidents,  but  his  ear 
nest  soul  was  not  disturbed .  This  eccentric  woman 
was  not  the  only  grotesque  figure  that  sometimes 
intruded  on  his  meetings. 

So  far,  however,  Garrison  was  within  the  bounds 
of  tenable,  if  not  of  indisputable,  opinion.  Unfort 
unately  he  did  not  stop  there.  It  was  an  age  of  ec 
centricities,  utopias,  and  chimeras,  religious,  social, 
and  political.  The  old  beliefs  were  giving  way. 
The  narrowness  of  the  churches  and  the  meanness 
of  their  attitude  on  this  very  question  of  morality 
drove  forth  the  free  and  aspiring  into  the  wilder 
ness.  This  was  the  day  of  Owen's  socialist  com- 

(114) 


munities,  of  Brook  Farm,  of  Thoreau's  hermitage. 
Every  man  of  intellect,  as  Emerson  said,  had  the 
scheme  of  an  ideal  society  in  his  pocket.  Garrison's 
heart  and  mind  were  open,  or,  to  use  the  phrase  of 
one  of  his  circle,  hospitable  to  all  schemes  that 
seemed  to  promise  increased  happiness  to  mankind. 
Nor  were  the  approaches  to  his  faith  much  guarded. 
Through  life  he  wasu  addicted  to  patent  medicines 
and  other  quackeries.  He  gave  himself  not  only  to 
novelties  such  as  phrenology,  homoeopathy,  and  hy 
dropathy,  but  to  clairvoyants,  who  diagnosed  his 
maladies  through  the  backs  of  their  heads,  and 
whose  diagnosis  he  trusted  when  it  agreed  with  his 

own.    Phrenologists  pronounced  his  bump  of  ideality 

.•^ 

large ;  and  he  said  that  he  should  lil^^g^take  up 
his  abode  in  the  country,  that  he  might  five  in  the 
ideal,  if  there  was  not  so  much  in  the  world  to  be 
put  right.  Garrison  even  fell  for  a  time  under  the 
spiritual  influence  of  John  Humphrey  Noyes,  the 
founder  of  the  Oneida  community,  and  a  man  of 
the  same  stamp  as  Harris,  the  founder  of  the  Erie 
community,  who  obtained  a  strange  ascendancy  over 
Laurence  Oliphant.  Noyes  taught  the  doctrine  of 
Perfectionism,  believing  that  sinlessness  was  at 
tainable  in  this  world  and  had  by  himself  been  at 
tained.  He  also  renounced  all  allegiance  to  temporal 
governments,  including  that  of  the  United  States, 
regarding  them  as  creations  of  human  wickedness, 

(  115) 


and  asserting  the  title  of  Jesus  Christ  to  the  throne 
of  the  world.  His  practical  attitude,  however, 
toward  governments  was  not  that  of  rebellion,  but 
of  Non-Eesistance.  Noyes  was  no  doubt  able  and 
imposing,  and  he  made  a  deep  impression  on  Garri 
son.  Perfectionism,  in  the  strict  spiritual  sense  of 
the  term,  appears  to  have  been  in  Garrison's  case  a 
passing  phase ;  to  his  biographers,  at  least,  the  dis 
covery  that  he  had  been  a  Perfectionist  and  a  dis 
ciple  of  Noyes  was  new.  But  Non-Resistance,  or,  as 
opponents  called  it,  No-Government,  took  a  stronger 
hold.  It  took  a  hold  so  strong  that  Garrison  even 
renounced  active  citizenship  and  made  himself,  as  it 
were,  a  political  eunuch  for  the  Kingdom  of  Heav 
en's  sake.  His  language  implies  that  the  constable 
and  sheriff,  the  judge  and  law-giver,  were  to  be 
swept  away;  that  to  talk  of  punishing  the  evil  and 
protecting  the  weak  by  courts  of  justice  is  at  vari 
ance  with  Christianity ;  and  that  we  cannot,  if  we 
are  true  to  our  religion,  sue  any  man  at  law,  to 
compel  him  by  force  to  restore  anything  which  he 
may  have  wrongly  taken  from  us  or  others,  but  if 
he  has  seized  our  coat,  we  ought  to  surrender  up 
our  cloak,  rather  than  subject  the  man  to  punish 
ment.  "As  to  the  governments  of  this  world, "he 
says,  "whatever  their  titles  or  forms,  we  shall  en 
deavor  to  prove  that,  in  their  essential  elements, 
as  at  present  administered,  they  are  all  anti-Christ; 

(116) 


that  they  can  never  by  human  wisdom  be  brought 
into  conformity  with  the  will  of  God  ;  that  they  can 
not  be  maintained  except  by  naval    and    military 
power ;  that  all  their  penal  enactments,  being  a  dead 
letter  without  an  army  to  carry   them  into  effect, 
are  virtually  written  in  human  blood ;  and  that  the 
followers  of  Jesus  should  instinctively  shun  their 
stations  of  honor,  power,   and  emolument — at   the 
same  time  'submitting  to  every  ordinance  of  man, 
for  the  Lord's  sake,'  and  offering  no  physical  resist 
ance  to  any  of  their  mandates,  however  unjust  or 
tyrannical/'     On  resuming  the  Liberator  as  his  own 
organ,  he  began  to  introduce  in  it  his  Perfectionism 
and  Non-Resistance,  to  the  natural  dismay  of  such 
of  his  friends  as  were  singly  devoted  to  Abolition. 
In  vain  did  they  press  upon  him  that  his  doctrines, 
carried  out  to  their  logical  extreme,  would  dissolve 
the  family  and  society,  prevent  a  father   from  re 
straining  his  children,  and  forbid  the  Liberator  him 
self,  when  he  was  attacked  by  a  mob,  to  accept  the 
protection  of  the  police.     In  vain  was  it  argued  that 
the  abolition  of  Slavery  itself,  if  it  was  to  be  effect 
ed  by  legislation,  would  involve  the  action  of   an 
earthly  government.     To  Non- Resistance  he  clung 
with  all  the  tenacity  of  his  character,  and  placed  in 
jeopardy  his  great  mission  to  organize  a  movement 
for  the  dissemination  of  the  doctrine.     A  natural 

revulsion  followed,  even  among  the  friends  of  the 

(117) 


Anti-Slavery  cause  in  England,  to  some  of  whom 
Garrison's  name  became  a  terror.  In  reviewing 
such  an  episode,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  the 
wisdom  of  this  world  is  not  the  note  of  a  moral  cru 
sader.  The  temperament  of  a  Savanarola  or  a  Gar 
rison  is  pretty  sure  to  be  such  as  will  expose  him  to 
delusion.  Savanarola 's  temperament  exposed  him 
to  hallucination.  Garrison's  fancies  about  Non- 
Besistance  and  No-Government  led  him  rather  into 
logical  than  into  practical  aberrations.  He  was 
constrained  to  condemn  the  Abolitionist  Love  joy  for 
defending  himself  against  the  Pro- slavery  mob  by 
which  he  was  slain.  He  had  to  parry  the  charge 
of  theoretical  anarchy  by  protesting  that  he  was 
no  anarch,  since  he  believed  in  the  Government  of 
God.  But  he  did  nothing  anarchic  or  insane ;  he 
practised  the  passive  obedience  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  preached ;  and  he  went  straight  on  his  path 
as  a  crusader  against  slavery.  He  had  a  sort  of 
saving  clause  in  his  No-Government  creed,  since  he 
held  that  human  governments  "  are  the  results  of 
human  disobedience  to  the  requirements  of  heaven 
and  they  are  better  than  anarchy;  just  as  a  hail 
storm  is  preferable  to  an  earthquake,  or  the  small 
pox  to  the  Asiatic  cholera."  He  could  quietly  bear 
the  hail-storm  and  put  up  with  the  small-pox.  The 
moral  force  which  he  had  created  and  which  he  sus 
tained  continued  to  act  on  the  voters,  though,  he 

(118) 


henceforth  himself  refused  to  vote.  Noyes'  slip 
pery  theories  about  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  oscil 
lating  between  chimerical  asceticism  and  license, 
could  take  no  hold  on  the  mind  of  an  excellent  hus 
band  and  father,  though  calumny  did  not  fail  to 
connect  them  with  Garrison's  name.* 

Criticism  will  be  kind  to  a  man  who,  in  the  midst 
of  so  much  that  was  dishonest,  sordid,  and  time-serv 
ing,  was  doing  his  best  with  a  single  heart  in  every 
way  for  righteousness  and  for  the  good  of  mankind, 
strange  as  some  of  his  eccentricities  may  have  been. 
Non-Resistance  and  No-Government  had  the  good 
effect  of  keeping  its  professor  clearer  than  ever  of 
political  party.  John  Stuart  Mill  afterward,  in  a 
eulogy  on  Garrison,  dwelt  on  the  happy  tendency 
of  a  great  reform  to  draw  with  it  other  great  reforms, 
evidently  having  in  his  mind  what  to  him  would 
appear  the  happy  association  of  Anti-Slavery  with 
Woman's  Rights.  Nor  is  even  a  moral  crusader 
bound  to  be  a  man  of  one  idea.  Yet  such  a  galaxy 
of  heresies  was  sure  not  only  to  make  or  embitter 
enemies,  but  to  disconcert  and  estrange  friends. 
The  first  consequence  was  an  appeal  from  the  clergy 
against  Garrison's  opinions,  his  rebellious  attitude 
toward  their  order,  and  his  encouragement  of  fe- 

*  It  may  be  well  here  to  remind  the  reader  that  Garrison's  sons 
are  in  no  way  responsible  for  the  opinions  of  the  writer,  though 
they  have  allowed  him  to  use  their  work  as  an  authentic  repertory 
of  facts. 

(119) 


male  propagandists,  whose  action  not  only  jarred 
with  their  notions  of  female  propriety  but  encroached 
on  their  ministerial  domain.  This  bombshell,  thrown 
from  without,  burst  without  doing  much  harm, 
though  a  desperate  quarrel  with  a  set  of  men  very 
powerful  and  in  their  hearts  probably  inclined  to 
the  right,  if  their  .church  trustees  would  have  left 
them  free,  could  do  the  cause  no  good.  Far  more 
serious  was  ^dissension  in  the  Garrisonian  camp  jit- 
self,  which,  by  the  withdrawal  of  support,  put  the 
Liberator  in  peril  of  its  life,  and  afterward  brought 
on  open  and  irreconcilable  schism,  first  in  the  Mas 
sachusetts  society  and  then  in  the  parent  society 
at  New  York.  It  would  surely  be  unjust  to  tax  all 
Garrison's  opponents  on  this  occasion  with  clerical 
fanaticism  or  personal  jealousy,  and  to  brand  all 
their  proceedings  as  conspiracy  and  cabal.  The 
names  of  Arthur  Tappan,  Garrison's  first  and  most 
generous  protector,  of  his  brother  Lewis,  of  Gerrit 
Smith,  who  was  partly  at  least  with  the  dissidents, 
and  of  John  G.  Whittier,  are  an  answer  to  sweeping 
imputations.  \JThese  men  had  good  reason  for  de 
siring  that  Abolitionism  should  not  be  compromised 
by  association  with  No-Government,  Non-Eesistance, 
anti-Sabbatarianism,  opposition  to  capital  punish 
ment,  theological  heterodoxy,  and  the  political  equal 
ity  of  the  sexes.  Garrison  had  a  right  to  his  own 

opinions  on  all  subjects,  and  he  had  a  right  to  give 

(120) 


them  free  expression  in  the  Liberator  when  that 
journal  was  entirely  his  own  and  not  the  official  or 
gan  of  the  party.  But  the  question  of  his  personal 
right  was  one  thing,  that  of  his  eligibility  as  a 
leader  and  of  his  journal's  eligibility  as  a  mouth 
piece  were  another ;  and  on  the  second  point  there 
might  well  be  sincere  misgiving.  Wilberforce  would 
assuredly  have  forfeited  the  leadership  of  British 
Abolitionism  if  he  had  taken  to  preaching  the  doc 
trines  of  Humphrey  Noyes,  throwing  down  the 
gauntlet  of  defiance  to  all  the  clergy,  tilting  against 
the  Sabbath,  and  agitating  in  favor  of  Female 
Suffrage.  Elizur  Wright,  whose  arguments  Gar 
rison's  sons,  keeping  the  noble  tradition  of  their 
father's  candor,  have  faithfully  set  before  us,  put  the 
case  most  forcibly  and  at  the  same  time  in  the  most 
friendly  w^ay.  He  and  those  who  thought  like  him 
were  entitled  to  respectful  attention.  To  the  charge 
of  making  the  movement  sectarian,  they  might  have 
retorted  that  sects,  and  very  narrow  sects,  may  be 
founded  on  denial  and  destruction  as  well  as  on  pos 
itive  doctrines  or  institutions,  and  that  the  Garri- 
sonians  were  giving  Abolitionism  the  character  be 
fore  the  world  of  an  anti-Biblical,  anti-Clerical,  anti- 
Governmental,  anti-Sabbatarian  and  Female-Suffra 
gist  sect.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  much  to 
be  said  for  the  policy  of  winking  hard  at  Garrison's 
errors,  retaining  him  as  leader,  and  trying  to  keep 

(121) 


him  in  the  straight  path.  His  singleness  of  aim, 
purity,  disinterestedness,  were  beyond  suspicion:  in 
devotion  to  the  cause  and  in  the  sacrifices  which  he 
had  made  for  it  he  surpassed  all  its  other  champi 
ons,  and  it  was  thoroughly  identified  with  his  name. 
Garibaldi  was  liable  to  serious  aberrations,  but  as 
his  aberrations  were  of  the  head,  not  of  the  heart, 
and  he  was  the  soul  and  cynosure  of  the  movement, 
the  friends  of  Italian  independence  deemed  it  best 
to  keep  him  as  their  leader,  steadying  his  course 
by  their  healthy  counsels  as  well  as  they  could. 
Garrison's  enemies — and  enemies  he  no  doubt  had 
— accused  him  of  arrogant  assumption  and  of  bear 
ing  himself  as  if  he  were  the  cause  incarnate.  It 
is  very  difficult  for  a  man  to  lead  without  making 
it  felt  that  he  is  the  leader  and  thereby  giving  um 
brage  to  touchy  and  jealous  natures.  But  Miss 
Martineau  bears  witness  to  Garrison's  remarkable 
freedom  from  arrogance,  and  even  to  the  humility 
of  his  manner.  In  his  home,  she  says,  no  one  would 
have  suspected  that  he  was  the  great  man.  He  cer 
tainly  never  played  the  Moses  or  the  Mahomet.  At 
all  events,  it  would  have  been  well  to  bear  with 
much,  rather  than  incur  a  fatal  schism.  "Contest 
for  Leadership "  is  a  sinister  phrase  to  appear 
in  the  history  of  a  moral  crusade,  and  a  sound 
full  of  comfort  to  the  enemy.  The  contest  in 
this  case,  however,  was  not  between  Garrison  and 

(122) 


a  rival,  but  between  one  policy  or  principle  and 
another. 

So  far  as  Garrison  was  contending  against  the 
conversion  of  Abolition  from  a  moral  movement  into 
a  third  political  party,  putting  forward  candidates 
for  the  Presidency  and  the  offices  of  State,  wre  must 
pronounce  him  to  have  been  still  acting  in  the  right, 
and  to  have  received  from  subsequent  experience 
the  strongest  confirmation  of  his  views.  So  far  as 
he  insisted  on  the  doctrine  of  political  effacement 
and  the  renunciation  by  citizens  of  a  citizen's  right 
and  duty,  and  so  far  as  he  insisted  on  mixing  up 
Abolition,  ostensibly  or  practically,  with  No-Gov 
ernment,  Non-Resistance,  anti-Sabbatarianism, anti- 
Clericalism  or  Woman's  Rights,  most  people  will 
hold  that  he  was  in  the  wrong,  and  that  his  oppo 
nents,  if  they  were  not  actuated  by  personal  feel 
ings  or  by  clique,  had  right  upon  their  side. 

What  was  the  exact  question  on  which  the  two 
parties  at  last  joined  issue  it  is  not  easy  to  discern. 
In  the  Massachusetts  society,  which  was  the  scene 
of  their  first  encounter,  the  issue  seems  to  have 
been  that  between  "No-Government"  and  political 
duty.  In  the  debate  Garrison  was  hard  pressed. 
He  was  called  upon  again  and  again  to  say  defi 
nitely  whether  voting  was  sinful,  and  the  only  an 
swer  which  he  would  give  for  it  was  that  "it  was 

sinful  for  him."     How  could  he  think  a  thing  sin- 

(123) 


ful  for  himself  and  not  sinful  for  other  people,  the 
moral  circumstances  of  all,  in  respect  of  the  mat 
ter  in  question,  being  identically  the  same?  In  the 
Massachusetts  society  the  Garrisonians  gained  an 
easy  victory.  But  the  final  hattle  was  fought  in  a 
convention  of  the  parent  society  at  New  York. 
To  that  Armageddon  the  Garrisonians  of  Massa 
chusetts  went  in  a  steamer  chartered  for  the  pur 
pose,  buoyant  from  their  recent  triumph.  Their 
buoyancy  perhaps  was  rather  too  great,  considering 
that  they  were  going  to  fight  old  friends.  "There 
never,"  wrote  Garrison,  "has  been  such  a  mass  of 
'ultraism  '  afloat,  in  one  boat,  since  the  first  victim 
was  stolen  from  the  fire-smitten  and  blood-red  soil 
of  Africa.  There  were  persons  of  all  ages,  complex 
ions,  and  conditions,  from  our  time-honored  and 
veteran  friend  Seth  Sprague,  through  ripened  man 
hood  down  to  rosy  youth.  They  were,  indeed,  the 
moral  and  religious  elite  of  New  England  Abolition 
ism,  who  have  buckled  on  the  anti-slavery  armor 
to  wear  to  the  end  of  the  conflict,  or  to  the  close 
of  life.  It  was  truly  a  great  and  joyful  meeting, 
united  together  by  a  common  bond,  and  partaking 
of  the  one  spirit  of  humanity.  Such  greetings  and 
shaking  of  hands !  such  interchanges  of  thoughts  and 
opinions !  such  zeal  and  disinterestedness  and  faith ! 
Verily  it  was  good  to  be  there!"  The  other  party 
mustered  all  its  forces.  The  issue  on  this  occasion 

(124) 


was  the  Woman  Question.  Miss  Abby  Kelley  was 
nominated  by  the  Woman's  Eights  party  as  a  mem 
ber  of  the  business  committee,  and  her  election  was 
carried  by  a  majority  of  about  a  hundred  out  of  a 
vote  of  1,008.  Thus  Garrison  was  victorious  and 
retained  the  leadership.  But  the  other  party  se 
ceded,  and  the  breach  never  was  healed.  It  was  a 
disastrous  and  discreditable  episode  in  the  history 

of  a  moral  crusade. 

(125) 


X. 

CONFIRMED  in  his  leadership,  Garrison  appeared 
as  the  representative  of  American  Abolitionism  at 
the  World's  Convention  in  London  (1840).  He 
took  with  him  among  his  colleagues  in  the  dele 
gation  Lucretia  Mott  and  other  women,  and  he  in 
sisted  on  their  admission  to  the  Convention.  Here 
he  had  to  encounter  a  prejudice  against  the  appear 
ance  of  women  on  the  platform,  or  as  active  partic 
ipants  in  public  meetings,  still  stronger  than  that 
against  which  he  had  contended  in  his  own  country. 
In  those  days  even  a  man  of  social  position  and  re 
finement  in  England  was  disposed  to  shrink  from 
the  platform  unless  he  was  in  public  life,  and  the 
appearance  of  his  wife  and  daughter  there  would 
have  been  shocking  to  him  in  the  highest  degree. 
Nor  could  it  be  denied  that  this  feeling  was  inti 
mately  related  to  the  domestic  character  of  the  race 
and  the  strength  of  its  family  institutions.  It  was 
true  that  this  was  a  World's  Convention,  and  that 
a  merely  local  sentiment  had  no  right  to  be  heard. 
But  this  was  not  merely  a  local  sentiment ;  it  was 

almost  a  universal  sentiment,  though  it  was  pecul- 

(126) 


iarly  strong  in  the  country  in  which  the  Convention 
met.  The  object  of  that  Convention  was  not  to  re 
form  the  relations  between  the  sexes  and  assert  the 
right  of  women  to  mount  platforms,  but  to  set  free 
the  slave.  Garrison  had  brought  the  women  over. 
In  refusing  to  sit  in  the  Convention  without  them 
and  seceding  to  the  gallery  he  did  right.  But  the 
women,  if  they  cared  more  for  the  cause  than  for 
their  own  claims,  would  have  done  well  in  putting 
an  end  to  the  dilemma  by  peremptory  withdrawal. 
In  other  respects  the  Convention  went  off  well. 
Splendid  entertainments  were  given,  one  by  Mrs. 
Opie,  and  another  by  the  great  Quaker  banker, 
Samuel  Gurney,  who  sent  seven  barouches  to  convey 
the  delegates  to  his  suburban  seat.  "  A  great  sen 
sation  did  we  produce  as  we  paraded  through  the 
streets  of  London."  The  Duchess  of  Sutherland 
came  in  all  her  splendor.  Haydon  made  a  picture 
of  the  Convention,  and  the  Duchess  bespoke  a  copy 
of  Garrison's  likeness.  CTConnell  contributed  some 
eloquence,  which  it  is  needless  to  say  was  "blister 
ing."  Not  less  blistering  was  Garrison's  language 
-in  a  letter  to  the  Quaker,  Pease,  in  which,  denounc 
ing  slave-owners,  and  American  slave-owners  above 
all,  as  unequalled  among  oppressors  "  in  ferocious 
ness  of  spirit,  moral  turpitude  of  character,  and  des 
perate  depravity  of  heart,"  he  declared  that  he  con 
sidered  their  conversion  "  by  appeals  to  their  under - 


standings,  consciences,  and  hearts  about  as  hopeless 
as  any  attempt  to  transform  wolves  and  hyenas  into 
lambs  and  doves  by  the  same  process."  To  read 
such  invective  without  a  shudder  one  must  bear  in 
mind  that  at  this  time  negroes  in  the  South  were 
being  burned  alive  at  a  slow  fire. 

One  of  Garrison 's  companions  on  this  mission  was 
C.  L.  Eemond,  a  colored  man.  In  the  American 
ship  Remond  was  compelled  to  go  in  the  steer 
age,  and  had  to  undergo  the  indignities  of  nigger- 
hood.  In  England  he  accompanied  his  white 
friends  everywhere,  sat  down  to  table  with  dukes 
and  duchesses,  and  was  received  with  favor  in  every 
circle.  Garrison  moralizes  on  the  difference  be 
tween  the  conduct  of  democracy  and  that  of  aris 
tocracy;  but  it  is  always  to  be  borne  in  mind  that 
in  England  the  negro  had  never  been  branded  with 
slavery. 

The  reception  of  Garrison  on  his  return  seems  to 
show  the  progress  that  his  movement  had  been 
making.  "  Although,"  he  says,  "  we  took  the  'Bos- 
tonians  '  by  surprise,  they  nevertheless  rushed  to  the 
wharves  by  thousands,  and  gave  the  Acadia  a  grand 
reception.  It  was  one  of  the  most  thrilling  scenes 
I  ever  witnessed ;  and  as  it  was  the  termination  of 
my  v°yage>  1  could  not  help  weeping  like  a  child  for 
joy.  Never  did  home  before  look  so  lovely.  On 

landing,  we  were  warmly  received  by  a  deputation 

(128) 


of  our  white  and  colored  anti-slavery  friends,  from 
whom  I  received  the  pleasing  intelligence  that  my 
dear  wife  and  children  were  all  well.  These  I  soon 
embraced  in  my  arms,  gratefully  returning  thanks 
to  God  for  all  his  kindness  manifested  to  us  during 
our  separation.  I  need  not  attempt  to  describe  the 
scene. "  The  heart  of  Boston  herself  was  apparently 
beginning  to  change.  ~-A  nobler  spirit  seems  to  have 
been  aroused  by  such  outrages  on  law  as  the  killing 
of  Love  joy  and  by  the  aggressions  on  the  freedom 
of  opinion. 

The  schism  could  not  fail  to  weaken  the  move 
ment.  It  was  immediately  followed  by  the  collapse 
of  a  number  of  local  associations.  Happily  the 
conscience  of  the  nation  had  already  been  effectually 
stirred,  and,  as  Garrison  said,  "  the  mighty  reaction  j 
was  felt,  and  abolition  was  going  forward  with  wind  | 
and  tide."  Societies — so  the  chronicle  of  his  life; 
tells  us — were  still  increasing  in  number,  even  Con 
necticut  at  last  wheeling  into  line,  while  its  legisla 
ture  repealed  the  law  aimed  against  Prudence  Cran- 
dall's  school,  secured  fugitive  slaves  the  right  to  trial 
by  jury,  and  joined  in  the  Northern  protest  against 
the  admission  of  new  Slave  States,  and  assertion  of 
the  right  and  duty  of  Congress  to  abolish  slavery 
in  the  District  of  Columbia.  Notwithstanding  hard 
times,  money  had  been  found  for  the  maintenance 
of  a  host  of  travelling  lecturers  and  for  the  myriad 

(120) 


publications  of  the  American  society.  Political  con 
ventions  began  to  adopt  anti-slavery  resolutions. 
The  clergy  attended  in  increased  numbers  anti -slav 
ery  meetings.  In  the  Methodist  Church  especially 
there  was  a  spread  of  anti-slavery  sentiment  which 
reactionary  bishops  found  it  difficult  to  keep  down. 
Six  out  of  twenty-eight  Methodist  Conferences  and 
a  thousand  itinerant  clergymen  of  the  Methodist 
Church  had  declared  for  the  cause.  Five  sixths 
of  the  ministers  of  Franklin  County,  Massa 
chusetts,  and  a  clerical  convention  at  Worces 
ter,  pronounced  against  slavery  and  in  favor  of 
immediate  abolition.  Petitioning  Congress  for  abo 
lition,  against  extension  of  the  area  of  slavery,  and 
in  support  of  the  right  of  petitioning  itself,  went 
on.  In  despite  of  all  errors  or  extravagances  on  the 
part  of  the  preacher,  the  national  conscience  had 
been  pricked  and  the  call  to  repentance  had  been 
heard. 

Garrison  continued  to  exercise  his  poetic  powers, 
which,  as  has  already  been  said,  were  not  mean. 
Perhaps  the  best  description  and  vindication  of  his 
general  position  are  to  be  found  in  the  two  sonnets 
which  he  wrote  about  this  time,  and  which  are  also 
fair  specimens  of  his  gift.  One  of  the  sonnets  is  an 
invocation  to  Liberty;  the  other  was  written  on 
completing  his  thirty-fifth  year: 

(130) 


I. 

They  tell  me,  LIBERTY  !  that,  in  thy  name, 
I  may  not  plead  for  all  the  human  race ; 
That  some  are  born  to  bondage  and  disgrace, 

Some  to  a  heritage  of  woe  and  shame, 

And  some  to  power  supreme,  and  glorious  fame. 
With  my  whole  soul  I  spurn  the  doctrine  base, 
And,  as  an  equal  brotherhood,  embrace 

All  people,  and  for  .all  fair  freedom  claim  ! 

Know  this,  O  man  !  whate'er  thy  earthly  fate — 

GOD  NEVER  MADE  A  TYRANT  NOR  A  SLAVE  : 

Woe,  then,  to  those  who  dare  to  desecrate 

His  glorious  image  !  for  to  all  He  gave 
Eternal  rights,  which  none  can  violate  ; 
And,  by  a  mighty  hand,  the  oppressed  He  yet  shall  save. 

II. 

If  to  the  age  of  threescore  years  and  ten, 
God  of  my  life !  thou  shalt  my  term  prolong, 
Still  be  it  mine  to  reprobate  all  wrong, , 

And  save  from  woe  my  suffering  fellow-men. 

Whether,  in  Freedom's  cause,  my  voice  or  pen 
Be  used  by  Thee,  who  art  my  boast  and  song, 
To  vindicate  the  weak  against  the  strong, 

Upon  my  labors  rest  Thy  benison ! 

O !  not  for  Afric's  sons  alone  I  plead, 
Or  her  descendants  ;  but  for  all  who  sigh 

In  servile  chains,  whate'er  their  caste  or  creed  : 
They  not  in  vain  to  Heaven  send  up  their  cry ; 

For  all  mankind  from  bondage  shall  be  freed, 
And  from  the  earth  be  chased  all  forms  of  tyranny. 

On  his  return  to  America  we  find  him  at  the 
Chardon  Street  Chapel  Convention,  the  object  of 
which  was  to  call  a  meeting  for  the  discussion  of 
the  Sabbath  and  for  an.  inquiry  into  the  origin, 
nature,  and  authority  of  the  ministry  and  the  church 

( 131  ) 


as  now  existing.  Among  those  present  were  some 
men  of  mark,  such  as  James  Russell  Lowell,  Theo 
dore  Parker,  K.  W.  Emerson,  and  W.  E.  Channing. 
The  anti-slavery  movement  may  be  regarded  as  a 
segment  of  a  great  moral  movement  of  which,  as  well 
as  of  the  theological  liberalism  of  his  day,  Theodore 
Parker  was  perhaps  the  foremost  apostle,  unless 
Emerson  deserves  that  palm.  The  Chardon  Street 
Convention  came  to  nothing,  but  the  discussion 
which  arose  out  of  it  gave  Garrison  an  opportunity 
of  once  more  explaining  his  "infidelity." 

"  I  am  an  '  infidel, '  forsooth,  because  I  do  not  believe  in  the 
inherent  holiness  of  the  first  day  of  the  week  ,  in  a  regular  priest 
hood  ;  in  a  mere  flesh- and-blood  corporation  as  constituting  the 
true  church  of  Christ ;  in  temple  worship  as  a  part  of  the  new 
dispensation ;  in  being  baptized  with  water,  and  observing  the 
'  ordinance  '  of  the  supper,  etc. ,  etc.  I  am  an  '  infidel '  because 
I  do  believe  in  consecrating  all  time,  and  body,  and  soul  unto 
God  ;  in  'a  royal  priesthood,  a  chosen  generation  ;'  in  a  spiritual 
church,  built  up  of  lively  stones,  the  head  of  which  is  Christ : 
in  worshipping  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  without  regard  to 
time  or  place ;  in  being  baptized  with  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  en 
joying  spiritual  communion  with  the  Father,  etc.  If  this  be 
infidelity,  then  is  Quakerism  infidelity." 

Presently  we  have  Garrison  coming  again  to  the 
rescue  of  Perfectionism  against  clerical  attacks. 
But  Noyes  differed  from  him  on  the  Woman  Ques 
tion.  This  difference  may  have  had  the  fortunate 
effect  of  diminishing  the  sinister  influence  of  the 
prophet.  Noyes'  community  also  failed  to  attract. 

We  seem  to  hear  little  henceforth  of  Perfectionism, 

(132) 


and  somewhat  less  even  of  No -Government  and 
Non-Resistance.  The  Non-Resistant,  the  organ  of 
the  N  on -Resistance  Society,  and  the  Society  itself, 
presently  expired.  Woman's  Rights  continued  in 
full  force. 

(133) 


XI. 

THE  next  chapter  in  the  "Story"  is  " Re-forma 
tion  and  Reanirnation. "  In  this,  so  much  of  the  in 
tellectual  element  of  the  party  having  been  cut  off 
by  the  schism,  a  rougher  element  came  more  to  the 
front.  All  fervid  moral  movements,  it  is  truly  said, 
"  unavoidably  draw  to  themselves  the  insane,  the  un 
balanced,  the  blindly  enthusiastic. "  After  the  seces 
sion  of  other  elements,  the  prominence  of  such  ele 
ments  could  not  fail  to  be  increased.  "  Moral  plough 
shares  "  the  chronicle  calls  them,  and  it  admits  that 
their  logic  was  severe  and  relentless,  their  discourse 
not  seldom  grim,  and  their  invective  sweeping.  They 
were  of  the  same  stamp  as  the  Fifth  Monarchy  Men 
of  the  English  Revolution  or  the  enthusiastic  Qua 
kers.  The  objects  of  their  onslaughts  were  the 
churches.  Garrison,  we  are  told,  in  spirit  was 
completely  in  harmony  with  them,  but  in  details  of 
language  and  of  policy  he  felt  at  liberty  to  differ. 
He  having  moved  a  resolution  at  a  meeting  that 
among  the  responsible  classes  in  the  non-slavehold- 
ing  States  the  religious  professors,  and  especially 
the  clergy,  stand  wickedly  pre-eminent,  one  of  the 

(134) 


"  moral  ploughshares  "  moved  as  an  amendment  that 
"the  church  and  clergy  of  the  United  States  as  a 
whole  constitute  a  great  brotherhood  of  thieves." 
The  clergy  were  not  much  to  be  blamed  if  they  did 
not  receive  such  hot-gospellers  with  open  arms. 

Among  his  subordinate  missions,  Garrison  was 
still  an  apostle  of  temperance,  and  he  preached  not 
only  against  drink,  but  against  tobacco.  In  a  trip, 
partly  for  lecturing,  partly  for  pleasure,  which  he 
took  about  this  time,  a  pleasant  and  lively  incident 
in  connection  with  this  part  of  his  apostleship 
occurred. 

"As  \ve  rode  through  the  [Franconia]  Notch  after  friends 
Beach  and  Rogers,  we  were  alarmed  at  seeing  smoke  issue  from 
their  chaise-top,  and  cried  out  to  them  that  their  chaise  was 
afire!  We  were  more  than  suspicious,  however,  that  it  was 
something  worse  than  that,  and  that  the  smoke  came  out  of 
friend  Rogers'  mouth.  And  it  so  turned  out.  This  was  before 
we  reached  the  Notch  tavern.  Alighting  there  to  water  our 
beasts,  we  gave  him,  all  round,  a  faithful  admonition.  For 
anti-slavery  does  not  fail  to  spend  its  intervals  of  public  service 
in  mutual  and  searching  correction  of  the  faults  of  its  friends. 
We  gave  it  soundly  to  friend  Rogers — that  he,  an  abolitionist, 
on  his  way  to  an  anti-slavery  convention,  should  desecrate  his 
anti- slavery  mouth  and  that  glorious  Mountain  Notch  with  a 
stupefying  tobacco  weed.  We  had  halted  at  the  Iron  Works 
tavern  to  refresh  our  horses,  and,  while  they  were  eating,  walked 
to  view  the  furnace.  As  we  crossed  the  little  bridge,  friend 
Rogers  took  out  another  cigar,  as  if  to  light  it  when  we  should 
reach  the  fire.  'Is  it  any  malady  you  have  got,  Brother  Rogers, ' 
said  we  to  him,  'that  you  smoke  that  thing,  or  is  it  habit 
and  indulgence  merely?'  'It  is  nothing  but  habit,'  said  he 
gravely,  'or,  I  would  say,  it  was  nothing  else,'  and  he  signifi 
cantly  cast  the  little  roll  over  the  railing  into  the  Ammonoosuck. 
'  A  revolution  !'  exclaimed  Garrison,  'a  glorious  revolution,  with- 

(185) 


out  noise  or  smoke  /'  and  he  swung  his  hat  cheerily  about  his 
head. 

"  It  was  a  pretty  incident,  and  we  joyfully  witnessed  it  and 
as  joyfully  record  it.  It  was  a  vice  abandoned,  a  self-indul 
gence  denied,  and  from  principle.  It  was  quietly  and  beauti 
fully  done.  We  call  on  any  smoking  abolitionist  to  take  notice 
and  to  take  pattern.  Anti -slavery  wants  her  mouths  for  other 
uses  than  to  be  flues  for  besotting  tobacco -smoke.  They  may  as 
well  almost  be  rum-ducts  as  tobacco-funnels.  And  we  rejoice 
that  so  few  mouths  or  noses  in  our  ranks  are  thus  profaned. 
Abolitionists  are  generally  as  crazy  in  regard  to  rum  and  tobac 
co  as  in  regard  to  slavery.  Some  of  them  refrain  from  eating 
flesh  and  drinking  tea  and  coffee.  Some  are  so  bewildered  that 
they  won't  fight  in  the  way  of  Christian  retaliation,  to  the  great 
disturbance  of  the  churches  they  belong  to,  and  the  annoyance 
of  their  pastors.  They  do  not  embrace  these  'new-fangled  no 
tions,  as  abolitionists — but,  then,  one  fanaticism  leads  to  another, 
and  they  are  getting  to  be  mono-maniacs,  as  the  Reverend 
Brother  Punchard  called  us,  on  every  subject." 

The  moral  atmosphere,  though  a  good  deal  puri 
fied  by  the  abolition  movement,  was  still  foul,  and 
quenched  lights,  even  bright  lights,  brought  into 
it  from  without.  There  came  from  Ireland  an  ap 
peal  against  slavery,  addressed  to  the  Irish  of  the 
United  States,  and  signed  by  sixty  thousand  Irish 
men,  with  O'Connell  at  their  head.  The  meeting 
at  Faneuil  Hall,  at  which  this  address  was  unrolled, 
was  said  by  Garrison  to  have  been  indescribably  en 
thusiastic  and  to  have  made  a  deep  impression  on 
the  public  mind.  On  the  mind  of  the  Irish  in  Amer 
ica  it  made  none.  The  Irishman  was  not  disposed 
to  have  his  foot  taken  from  the  neck  of  the  negro, 
the  one  being  on  whom  he  could  look  down.  Nor 
wras  he  disposed  to  forfeit  the  political  plunder  which 

(130) 


came  to  him  as  the  henchman  of  the  Democratic 
party,  now  the  party  of  slavery  and  the  South.  The 
Irish  Bishop  Hughes,  the  apologist  of  slavery,  ques 
tioned  the  authenticity  of  the  document.  The  Irish 
mob  of  Philadelphia  responded  to  it  by  a  murderous 
riot,  the  precursor  of  the  draft  riot  in  New  York, 
and  by  the  burning  of  a  benevolent  society's  hall. 
The  slave-owners  played  up  to  the  hand  of  their  allies 
in  the  North,  and  at  the  same  time  gratified  their 
hatred  of  England,  as  the  great  anti -slavery  power, 
by  espousing  the  cause  of  Irish  liberty.  Nor  did 
Garrison  himself  shrink  from  winning  Irish  support 
by  declaring  for  the  Repeal  of  the  Union.  Father 
Mathew,  the  Irish  apostle  of  Temperance,  after 
ward  visited  the  United  States,  and  was  received 
with  enthusiasm  by  his  compatriots.  He  had  signed 
the  appeal  against  slavery,  and  the  Garrisonians 
fondly  hoped  that  this  time  a  Daniel  was  come  to 
judgment.  Their  hopes  were  dashed  when  he  af 
fected  scarcely  to  remember  that  he  had  signed  the 
appeal,  and  plainly  showed  that  he  would  gladly 
repudiate  his  signature.  Extracts  from  O'Connell's 
anti-slavery  speeches  were  thrust  before  him  by 
the  Liberator  in  vain.  He  not  only  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  abolition  or  abolitionists,  but  he 
made  himself  scandalously  agreeable  to  the  other 
side.  All  that  Garrison  could  do  with  him  was  to 
present  him  in  a  very  sorry  aspect  before  the  world, 

(137) 


and  press  home  the  moral  lesson  of  his  apostasy. 
This  was  effectually  done.  A  similar  disappoint 
ment  awaited  the  abolitionists  when  Kossuth  visited 
the  United  States.  Him  also,  as  a  champion  of 
liberty,  they  expected  to  avow  his  sympathy  with 
the  liberators  of  the  slave.  He  avowed,  on  the  con 
trary,  his  sympathy  with  Southern  autonomy  and 
the  right  of  every  people  to  regulate  its  own  affairs 
and  institutions.  The  abolitionists  were  not  aware 
that  the  liberty  of  which  Kossuth  himself  was  the 
champion  was  that  of  a  dominant  race,  and  that 
there  would  be  a  certain  filament  of  sympathy  be- 
tw^een  the  Southern  white  who  wished  to  do  as  he 
liked  with  his  own  negro,  and  the  Magyar  who 
wished  to  do  as  he  liked  with  his  own  Croat. 

The  agents  sent  out  by  the  Free  Church  of  Scot 
land,  after  its  secession  from  the  State  Church,  to 
the  United  States,  to  seek  assistance  in  America, 
lapsed  even  more  sadly  than  Father  Mathew  and 
Kossuth.  They  took  money  from  Presbyterian 
slave -owners.  To  stop  this  scandal,  Garrison  a  third 
time  crossed  the  Atlantic.  He  was  successful  in  his 
mission,  though  the  churches  rang  in  vain  with  the 
cry,  "Send  back  the  money!"  He  met  personally 
with  a  reception  which  showed  that  his  name  was 
still  great  with  the  British  friends  of  his  cause. 
His  principal  speech  is  as  good  a  specimen  as  could 
be  given  of  his  oratory,  and  it  shows,  by  its  adapta- 

(138) 


tion  to  hearers  who  were  fighting  for  the  liberation 
of  the  Church  from  the  State,  that  the  speaker  could 
on  occasion  display  tact  as  well  as  power.  The 
speech  is  given  as  reported  in  the  London  Universe 
of  August  28,  1846. 

"He  was  received  with  enthusiastic  cheering,  hundreds  rising 
from  their  seats.  He  wished  to  know  if  they  were  in  eanest 
when  they  gave  him  that  reception?  Were  they  disposed  to  re 
gard  him  as  the  friend  of  'universal  liberty?  Then  he  begged  to 
tell  them  that  if  they  went  over  to  America  they  would  be 
deemed  fit  subjects  for  Lynch  law.  (Laughter  and  cheers.) 
What!  were  they  in  earnest?  Were  there  no  apologists  for 
slavery  there?  None  to  applaud  those  ancient  slave-holding 
patriarchs,  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob?  None  to  talk  of  sending 
Onesimus  back  to  his  master  because  he  was  a  slave?  Were 
there  none  to  apologize  for  those  pious  men  who  plundered 
cradles  of  babes,  tortured  women  by  the  slave-driver's  lash,  and 
sent  men  to  the  auction-block?  'Why,  then, '  said  Mr.  Garrison, 
'here's  my  hand  for  every  one  of  you,  and  here's  a  heart  that 
beats  in  unison  with  your  own. '  (Great  cheering. )  .  .  . 

"'It  is  no  common  conflict  in  which  we  are  engaged,  because 
whatever  forms  of  political  oppression  you  may  have  here,  or 
in  Europe,  or  in  the  world  besides,  there  is  no  power  so  dread 
ful  and  exterminating  as  American  slavery.  It  began  with  the 
very  beginning  of  the  Union  (hear!),  and  it  has  grown  with 
our  growth  until  it  now  holds  complete  mastery  over  the  whole 
country,  so  that  the  two  great  political  parties  are  eager  to  do 
its  bidding,  and  religious  sects  bow  before  it  and  do  it  homage  ; 
in  one  word,  it  has  completely  subjected  Church  and  State  be 
cause  they  are  on  the  side  of  slavery,  and  they  shall  go  down 
together.  (Great  applause. )  It  is  said  that  the  abolitionists  are 
assailing  the  American  Church ;  it  is  true.  It  is  said  they  are 
assailing  the  American  clergy  in  [as]  a  body  ;  it  is  true.  It  is 
said  they  are  assailing  the  Government  under  which  they  live  ; 
it  is  true.  It  is  said  they  are  seeking  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union  ;  it  is  true.  Why  do  I  say  this?  Because  the  Church  is 
the  stronghold  of  the  system  ;  because  the  Government  was  orig 
inally  so  constructed  that  it  gives  its  entire  support  to  slavery, 
so  long  as  the  slave-holder  shall  desire  it. 

(139) 


"'Now,  to  come  to  facts,  and  to  show  you  that  I  do  not  exag 
gerate  in  what  I  state,  I  will  read  for  you  a  few  extracts,  giv 
ing    you    the   very   words   of   the   abettors   of   slavery    in   the 
Church.   .   .   . 

"'Such  is  slavery  in  America!  And  yet  the  abolitionists  are 
stigmatized  as  infidels  because  they  would  have  no  such  Chris 
tianity  or  republicanism  as  sanctioned  such  atrocities.  Slavery 
is  a  curse  wherever  it  is  found.  It  not  only  smites  with  barren 
ness  the  most  fertile  soil  in  the  world,  but  it  makes  human  life 
cheap,  and,  in  fact,  of  no  value  at  all.  (Cheers. )  A  year  ago 
1  thought  I  would  collect  from  the  newspapers  all  the  horrible 
details  of  killing,  maiming,  etc. ,  connected  with  slavery,  and 
put  them  in  my  paper.  My  collection  was  imperfect,  for  I  had 
no  Southern  papers,  for  they  will  not  send  papers  to  me  from 
the  South.  I  took  the  Northern  papers,  and  took  out  of  them 
the  most  bloody  deeds.  They  are  very  few  indeed,  but  they 
show  the  state  of  society  there,  and  a  state  of  insecurity  for 
human  life  such  as  can  nowhere  else  be  found.  The  list  was 
begun  a  year  ago,  and  this  paper  is  full  of  short  paragraphs. 
[Here  Mr.  Garrison  unrolled  a  paper,  the  width  of  one  of  our 
columns,  made  up  of  short  accounts  of  murders,  etc.,  and  un 
rolled  it  from  end  to  end.  It  was  about  twelve  yards  long. 
There  were  calls  for  a  few  to  be  read.  Mr.  Garrison  then  read 
two  or  three,  and  then  continued.]  And  yet  there  are  those 
who  attempt  to  excuse  this  state  of  things.  I  am  sorry  that 
there  are  Englishmen  disposed  to  apologize  for  these  American 
Christians  who  keep  bloodhounds !  They  say  they  are  under  a 
great  mistake — they  are  in  error,  but  you  must  call  such  Chris 
tians  no  hard  or  bad  names.  But  I  say  the  American  people  are 
excluded  from  apology.  They  hold  the  Declaration  in  their  hand 
that  all  men  are  equal ;  then  they  enslave  their  brother,  and 
whip  him.  and  hunt  him  with  bloodhounds,  and  profess  the  gos 
pel  of  Christ.  Now,  no  man  can  be  excused  for  enslaving  an 
other,  whether  he  be  savage  or  civilized.  (Great  applause.) 
God  has  put  a  witness  in  every  man's  breast  which  protests 
against  man  holding  a  man  in  bondage.  I  never  debate  the 
question  as  to  whether  man  may  hold  property  in  man.  I  never 
degrade  myself  by  debating  the  question,  "Is  slavery  a  sin?"  It 
is  a  self-evident  truth,  which  God  hath  engraven  on  our  very 
nature.  Where  I  see  the  holder  of  a  slave,  I  charge  the  sin 
upon  him,  and  I  denounce  him.  .  .  . 

" '  Now,  what  have  we  American  abolitionists  a  right  to  ask 
(140) 


of  you  Englishmen?  You  ought  not  to  receive  slave  holders  as 
honest  Christian  men.  You  ought  not  to  invite  them  to  your 
pulpits,  to  your  communion-tables.  \Vill  you  see  to  it  that  they 
never  ascend  your  pulpits?  If  you  will,  then  the  slave  will 
bless  you,  and  thanks  from  the  American  abolitionists  will  come 
over  in  thunder  tones  for  your  decision,  and  you  will  give  a 
blow  to  slavery  from  which  it  will  not  recover.  We  ask  another 
thing  of  you.  Send  us  no  more  delegates  to  the  States,  or  if  you 
do,  let  there  be  no  divinity  among  them.  Nothing  but  common 
humanity  can  stand  in  the  United  States.  (Cheers.)  Send  us 
no  more  Baptist  clerical  delegates,  or  Methodist  or  Presbyterian 
or  Quaker  clerical  delegates.  They  have  all  played  into  the  hands 

of  slavery  against  the  abolitionists.      (Cheers.)     From  Dr.  C , 

down  to  the  last  delegation,  they  have  all  done  an  evil  work, 
and  have  strengthened  slavery  against  us.  Like  the  priest  and 
the  Levite,  they  have  passed  us  by  and  gone  on  the  other  side. 
They  found  the  cause  of  abolitionism  unpopular.  The  mass  of 
society  were  pro-slavery,  so  they  went  with  them,  and  we  have 
gone  to  the  wall.  Send  us  no  more,  if  you  please.  (Cheers.) 
We  have  had  to  say,  Save  us  from  our  English  friends,  and  we 
will  take  care  of  our  enemies.  There  have  been  those  who  have 
gone  over  to  America,  and  who  have  nobly  stood  their  ground. 
They  have  passed  through  the  fire,  and  no  smell  of  it  has  been 
found  on  them.  That  man  (pointing  to  the  chairman,  Mr. 
Thompson)  has  gone  through  it.  (Immense  cheering,  continued 
for  some  time. )  Though  rising  on  the  topmost  wave  of  popular 
ity  at  home,  he  consented  to  aid  us,  where  he  was  sure  to  be 
mobbed  and  scouted  But  he  never  blanched.  He  was  not 
afraid  to  make  himself  the  friend  and  companion  of  the  negro ; 
and  if  he  had  remained,  his  life  would  have  been  taken.  If  we 
had  desired  it,  he  would  have  remained  and  hazarded  his  life; 
but  we  said.  Go!  Now,  I  don't  know  if  had  he  been  divine  he 
could  have  stood  it.  While  a  man  remains  common  human 
ity,  I  can  trust  him  ;  but  when  he  gets  up  into  the  air,  where 
there  comes  something  superhuman  about  him,  I  am  afraid  of 
him.  (Cheers.) 

" '  Another  thing  don't  do.  Send  no  more  men  to  the  South  to 
get  money.  The  Free  Church  of  Scotland  is,  like  democratic- 
America,  stained  with  blood.  It  has  the  price  of  blood  in  its 
treasury.  Oh!  that  Free  Church  of  Scotland!  I  am  for  free 
dom  everywhere,  and  rejoice  that  that  Church  is  a  free  one  ;  but 
it  has  received  a  paltry  bribe,  and  abetted  slavery.  I  have  no 

( 141 ) 


idea  they  will  send  back  the  money.     The  laity  I  believe  would 
send  it  back,  but  the  divinity  prevents  it.'" 

In  the  mean  time,  as  the  leader  of  American  abo 
litionism,  Garrison  had  been  taking  a  bold  step  for 
ward.  He  had  declared  for  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union.  Political  iconoclasm  could  no  farther  go. 
The  Union  was  the  idol  to  which  the  nation,  even 
that  part  of  the  nation  of  which  mammon  was  not 
the  god,  had  blindly  bowed  down  and  been  willing 
to  sacrifice  its  morality.  In  the  Union  the  people 
saw  the  source  of  incalculable  blessings  and  the 
pledge  of  American  greatness.  The  fiat  of  nature 
seemed  herein  to  conspire  with  the  dictates  of  policy 
and  pride ;  for  the  Mississippi,  then  more  important 
than  it  has  been  since  the  introduction  of  railways, 
appeared  physically  to  bind  the  whole  frame  to 
gether.  The  sentiment  had  been  ardently  propa 
gated  by  Clay  and  the  men  of  the  West,  an  offspring 
of  the  collective  nation  to  which  the  old  divisions 
between  Federalism  and  anti-Federalism  were  un 
known.  It  had  been  intensified  by  the  War  of  1812. 
It  had  been  fixed  and  glorified  by  Webster's  great 
speech  against  Hayne.  The  people  had  been  trained 
even  to  believe  that  the  sacred  compact  demanded 
unquestioning  observance,  and  their  moral  percep 
tions  on  the  subject  of  slavery  had  been  confused 
by  that  belief.  They  fancied  that,  being  bound  by 

their   covenant,  they  were   no   more   morally   free 

(142) 


agents,  and  that  therefore  they  were  acquitted  of 
sin.  To  speak  against  the  Union  was  flat  blas- 
phemy;  and  of  this  blasphemy  Garrison  and  his 
circle  were  now  guilty  in  the  highest  degree. 

Of  the  political  abolitionists,  some  persuaded  them 
selves  that  slavery  was  not  in  the  Constitution; 
others  admitted  that  it  was  in  the  Constitution,  but 
thought  it  possible  that  the  Constitution  might  be 
amended ;  others,  again,  like  Gerrit  Smith,  with  a 
venial  inconsistency,  took  both  lines  at  once.  Gar 
rison  was  under  no  delusion  on  either  point.  He 
saw  that  though  the  actual  words  "slaves"  and 
"  slave-owners  "  might  not  be  found  in  the  Constitu 
tion,  "other  words  were  used  intelligently  and 
specifically  to  meet  the  necessities  of  slavery,"  and 
that  the  agreement  had  been  sealed  with  a  full  knowl 
edge  of  the  import  of  those  words  and  in  good  faith 
on  both  sides.  The  extension  of  the  slave-trade 
for  twenty  years,  the  provision  giving  political  se 
curity  to  the  slave-owner's  property  by  assigning 
him  votes  for  his  slaves,  and  the  enactment  of  a  fu 
gitive-slave  law  were  practical  comments  too  clear  to 
leave  any  doubt  in  an  honest  mind.  Garrison  knew, 
also,  that  Jefferson  had  proposed  to  introduce  into 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  a  clause  branding, 
though  most  unjustly,  George  III.  as  the  author  of 
the  slave-trade,  but  had  been  compelled  by  the  slave 
owners  to  withdraw  it.  If  the  name  of  slavery  had 

( 143 ) 


been  avoided  by  the  framers  of  the  Constitution 
while  they  recognized  and  perpetuated  the  thing, 
this  proved  not  their  innocence,  but  their  conscious 
ness  of  guilt.  False  interpretation  of  a  document 
in  the  interest  of  freedom  seemed  to  Garrison  neither 
moral  nor  strong.  As  little  was  he  inclined  to  a 
patriotic  falsification  of  history.  "  The  truth  is,"  he 
said,  "our  fathers  were  intent  on  securing  liberty 
to  themselves,  without  being  very  scrupulous  as  to 
the  means  they  used  to  accomplish  their  purpose. 
They  were  not  actuated  by  the  spirit  of  universal 
philanthropy ;  and  though  in  words  they  recognized 
occasionally  the  brotherhood  of  the  human  race,  in 
practice  they  continually  denied  it.  They  did  not 
blush  to  enslave  a  portion  of  their  fellow-men,  and 
to  buy  and  sell  them  as  cattle  in  the  market,  while 
they  were  fighting  against  the  oppression  of  the 
mother-country,  and  boasting  of  their  regard  for 
the  rights  of  men.  Why,  then,  concede  to  them 
virtues  which  they  did  not  possess?"  Patrick  Henry, 
the  Brutus  of  the  Eevolution,  was  all  his  life  noted 
for  his  sharpness  as  a  slave-trader.  The  slave 
owner,  in  appealing  to  the  Constitution,  had  the 
facts  undeniably  on  his  side ;  and  the  same  compact 
which  expressly  gave  him  slavery,  gave  him  also 
by  implication  a  right  to  the  necessary  safeguards 
of  slavery,  such  as  a  fugitive'-slave  law  to  be  execut 
ed  in  good  faith  by  the  North,  and  the  aid  of  fed- 

(144) 


eral  arms,  if  necessary,  in  suppressing  slave  insur 
rection.  Chief  Justice  Taney  was  vile ;  bat  he  was 
not  far  from  speaking  the  truth  when  he  pronounced 
that,  in  the  view  of  the  f  ramers  of  the  Constitution, 
the  black  man  had  no  rights  which  the  white  man 
was  bound  to  respect.  The  Constitution,  said  Gar 
rison,  meant  "  precisely  what  those  who  framed  and 
adopted  it  meant."  No  violent  construction  of  it 
could  be  admitted  against  the  wishes  of  either  of 
the  parties  to  the  bargain.  No  just  or  honest  use 
of  it  could  be  made,  in  opposition  to  the  plain  inten 
tion  of  its  f  ramers,  "except  to  declare  the  contract 
at  an  end  and  to  refuse  to  serve  under  it." 

Hope  either  of  amending  the  Constitution  with 
the  consent  of  the  slave-owner,  or  of  amending  it 
against  his  will  yet  without  disruption,  could  seri 
ously  be  entertained  by  no  man  who  considered  the 
temper  of  the  slave-owners,  the  relative  forces  of  the 
two  political  elements,  or  the  history  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  and  of  all  that  had  since  occurred. 
Compromise,  recognizing  slavery,  and  seeking  to 
put  territorial  limits  to  it,  was  the  highest  mark  of 
political  aspiration.  Finally  to  put  territorial  limits 
to  a  power  full  of  growth  and  ambition  was  scarcely 
possible,  as  the  annexation  of  Texas  proved.  But 
while  the  Union  lasted,  nothing  could  prevent  slav 
ery  from  pervading,  morally  and  socially,  the  whole 
Republic.  Nothing  could  dissever  the  responsibility. 

(145) 


Nothing  could  save  the  North  from  the  obligation 
to  lend  its  force,  in  case  of  necessity,  for  the  sup 
pression  of  slave  insurrection.  Nothing  could  re 
lieve  it  from  the  satanic  duty  of  slave-catching. 
The  legislative  obstacles  which  anti-slavery  senti 
ment  at  the  North  put  in  the  way  of  extradition, 
and  the  escape  of  negroes  to  Canada  which  it  facili 
tated,  were  breaches,  though  it  might  be  glorious 
breaches,  of  good  faith  toward  the  Southern  part 
ner  in  the  compact.  Politicians  like  Clay  and  Web 
ster  were  completely  blinded  to  the  future  by  their 
worship  of  the  Union.  Politicians  like  Seward, 
who  said  that  there  was  an  irrepressible  conflict, 
and  Lincoln,  who  said  that  the  Union  must  in  the 
end  be  all  slave  or  all  free,  had  an  inkling  of  the 
fatal  truth.  But  if  the  conflict  was  irrepressible, 
what  form  was  it  to  take  ?  That  of  a  constitutional 
struggle,  or  that  of  violence?  If  the  Union  was 
destined  to  be  all  slave  or  all  free,  how  was  the 
question  which  of  the  two  it  should  be  to  be  decided? 
Neither  Seward  nor  Lincoln  dared  to  say  or  per 
haps  even  to  conjecture.  But  if  either  of  them  had 
raised  the  veil  of  the  future  he  would  certainly  have 
seen  behind  it  the  grim  visa.ge  of  civil  war.  The 
plan  of  buying  out  slavery  being,  for  reasons  al 
ready  mentioned,  hopeless,  and  in  fact  having  hardly 
a  serious  adherent,  the  only  way  of  abolishing  slav 
ery  or  ridding  the  North  of  responsibility  for  it 

(146) 


without  dissolving  the  Union  was  civil  war.  The 
only  way  of  ridding  the  North  of  slavery  and  at  the 
same  time  escaping  civil  war  was  that  which  Gar 
rison  now  propounded,  the  dissolution  of  the  Union. 
In  no  uncertain  language  did  he  propound  it.  All 
ears  must  have  tingled  when  they  heard  the  divine 
work  of  the  Revolutionary  Fathers  denounced  as  ua 
covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement  with  hell." 
No  wonder  if  audiences  hissed  and  the  press  thun 
dered  when  Longfellow's  ode  to  the  Union  was 
dubbed  "a  eulogy  dripping  with  the  blood  of  em- 
bruted  humanity/'  and  to  the  poet's  image  of  a  ship 
of  state  was  opposed  that  of  a  ship  "  rotting  through 
all  her  timbers,  leaking  from  stem  to  stern,  laboring 
heavily  on  a  storm -tossed  sea,  surrounded  by  clouds 
of  disastrous  portent,"  navigated  by  pirates,  and 
destined  to  go  down  amid  the  exultation  of  all  who 
were  yearning  for  the  deliverance  of  a  groaning 
world.  "  No  Union  with  slave-holders  "  wras  hence 
forth  the  watchword  of  the  Liberator.  South  Caro 
lina  shouted  back, "  No  Union  with  free  labor !"  Both 
were  in  the  right;  and  in  compliance  with  their 
united  demand  lay  the  only  chance  of  escaping  the 
war  which  Garrison  was  unjustly  charged  with 
having  kindled. 

The  weak  point  in  Garrison's  policy  was  that  his 
No-Government  theory  had  left  him  without  a  mo 
tor.  How  but  through  the  agency  of  Government 

(147) 


was  the  Union  to  be  dissolved?  How  but  by  going 
to  the  polls  could  the  Government  be  set  in  motion  ? 
His  new  programme  set  forth  that  his  aim  was  "  to 
persuade  Northern  voters  that  the  strongest  politi 
cal  influence  which  they  can  wield  for  the  overthrow 
of  slavery  is  to  cease  sustaining  the  existing  com 
pact,  by  withdrawing  from  the  polls,  and  calmly 
waiting  for  the  time  when  a  righteous  government 
shall  supersede  the  institutions  of  tyranny."  But 
was  that  change  to  be  wrought  by  miracle?  And 
how,  according  to  the  Perfectionist  theory,  could 
any  human  government  be  righteous?  Here  again, 
however,  it  was  not  the  political  or  the  anti-political 
theory,  but  the  appeal  to  the  public  conscience, 
which  really  told.  The  annexation  of  Texas  came 
to  disabuse  the  people  of  their  fond  belief  in  a  quiet 
and  limited  Slave  Power.  To  those  who  regarded 
the  new  motto  as  calculated  to  impair  the  character 
and  influence  of  the  Society,  the  Liberator  replied 
that  "  the  Society  had  never  had  any  character  ex 
cept  for  fanaticism,  and  never  would  have  any  till 
the  trumpet  of  jubilee  sounded  through  the  land, 
and  that  its  influence  had  been  just  in  proportion  to 
its  faith  in  God,  its  fidelity  to  its  principles,  and  its 
readiness  to  be  without  reputation."  For  the  pres 
ent  he  anticipated  fresh  contumely  and  derision.  It 
can  hardly  be  said  that  his  anticipation  was  fulfilled. 
Outbursts  of  wrath,  of  course,  there  were,  and  were 

(148) 


sure  to  be  when  the  Convention  of  the  Anti-Slavery 
Society  presented  a  banner  to  its  president,  bearing 
on  it  the  satirical  device  of  the  national  eagle  with 
one  foot  on  the  Constitution  and  the  other  on  a 
prostrate  slave.  Yet  disunionist  banners  multiplied , 
and  disunion  sentiment  spread  not  only  among  the 
Old  School  or  moral  party  of  Abolitionists,  but 
beyond. 

But  the  Union  having  been  dissolved,  what  was 
to  become  of  the  negroes?  Were  they  to  be  left  to 
the  mercy  of  the  slave-owner?  To  this  question  the 
mind  of  the  Liberator  seems  not  to  have  been  prac 
tically  turned.  He  protested,  it  is  true,  in  gen 
eral  words,  that  he  had  no  intention  of  abandoning 
his  client.  But  the  specific  mode  in  which  the  res 
cue  of  the  client  was  to  be  effected  does  not  appear. 
"My  reliance,"  he  says,  "for  the  deliverance  of  the 
oppressed  universally,  is  upon  the  nature  of  man, 
the  inherent  wrongfulness  of  oppression,  the  power 
of  truth,  and  the  omnipotence  of  God."  But  he 
had  said  before  that  the  slave-owner  was  beyond  the 
pale  of  moral  influence,  and  that  you  might  as  well 
try  to  change  the  nature  of  a  beast  of  prey.  The 
oftener  we  review  the  question  the  more  certain  it 
seems  that  in  the  absence  of  any  superior  power, 
such  as  has  been  exercised  by  the  Czar  in  the  abo 
lition  of  Russian  serfage,  or  by  the  Imperial  Parlia 
ment  in  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies, 

(149) 


the  inevitable  end  was  either  the  triumph  of  slavery 
or  civil  war.  The  year  1845  saw  the  apparent 
triumph  of  slavery,  which,  having  achieved  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  had  put  the  politicians,  and 
seemed  to  have  put  the  nation,  under  its  feet.  The 
year  1847  saw  Garrison  carrying  the  torch  of  con 
science  into  dark  places  of  the  West  on  the  invita 
tion  of  the  Abolitionists  of  Ohio.  He  was  accom 
panied  by  Frederick  Douglass,  whose  eloquence 
might  be  cited  as  a  proof  of  the  capacities  of  his 
race  had  he  been  a  pure  negro;  but  he  was  a  half- 
caste.  The  negro  race,  both  in  its  native  land  and 
in  the  lands  to  which  it  has  been  transported  by  the 
slave-ship,  has  been  placed  under  such  disadvantages 
that  no  fair  inference  as  to  its  capacity  can  be  drawn 
from  what  it  has  yet  done  or  produced.  But  Tous- 
saint  L'Ouverture,  it  is  believed,  is  the  only  pure 
negro  who  has  yet  risen  to  anything  like  eminence ; 
and  Toussaint,  though  a  perfect  negro,  seems  to 
have  been  of  a  peculiar  and  princely  family.  Mixed, 
however,  as  the  race  of  Frederick  Douglass  was, 
and  manifest  as  was  his  relation  to  the  white  race, 
this  did  not  save  him  from  contumely,  even  in  a 
free  State.  When  seated  in  the  cars  he  was  ordered 
by  a  man,  who  had  a  lady  with  him,  in  a  slave- 
driving  tone,  to  get  out  of  that  seat.  He  quietly 
replied  that  he  would  readily  give  up  the  seat  if  he 

were  requested  in  a  civil  manner.     The  white  man 

(150) 


thereupon  laid  violent  hands  upon  him,  dragged 
him  out,  and,  when  Douglass  protested,  told  him 
he  would  knock  his  teeth  down  his  throat.  At 
Harrisburg,  the  mob  having  been  told  that  a  "  nig 
ger  "  was  to  lecture,  came  provided  with  brickbats, 
rotten  eggs,  and  fire-crackers,  of  which  they  made  a 
liberal  use.  Douglass  was  not  allowed  to  sit  down 
at  the  eating  tables,  and  for  twTo  days  hardly  tasted 
food.  Garrison  contrasts  this  with  the  splendid  re 
ception  given  the  same  man  in  all  parts  of  Great 
Britain.  Nothing,  perhaps,  has  ever  equalled  the 
intensity  of  caste  feelings  generated  by  the  brand  of 
slavery,  combined  with  the  difference  of  color  and 
the  physical  antipathy,  in  the  United  States.  Nor 
was  the  keenness  of  the  American  in  discovering  the 
slightest  trace  of  negro  blood  where  no  stranger 
would  have  suspected  its  existence  less  remarkable 
than  his  abhorrence  of  it  when  discovered.  Garri 
son's  defiance  of  the  feeling  by  open  and  persistent 
intercourse  with  the  blacks  was  proof  of  a  moral 
heroism  to  which,  since  caste  has  been  mitigated  by 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  we  can  hardly  do  full  jus 
tice.  Heretic  though  he  might  be,  no  man  ever 
bore  witness  more  bravely  or  with  greater  self-sac 
rifice  to  the  brotherhood  of  man,  which  is  the  social 
foundation  of  Christianity. 

The  receptions  given  to  the  Abolitionists  varied 
at  different  places.     The  clergy,  Garrison  says,  were 

(151) 


/  hostile,  and  his  feeling  against  the  clergy  grew 
\  stronger  than  ever.  Sometimes  a  place  for  his 
meetings  could  hardly  he  found ;  but  at  other  places 
the  common  people  heard  him  gladly,  and  the  con 
course  was  immense.  At  New  Lyme,  in  Ohio,  "  when 
the  dense  mass  moved  off  in  their  long  array  of  ve 
hicles,  dispersing  in  every  direction  to  their  several 
homes,  some  a  distance  of  ten,  others,  of  twenty, 
others  of  eighty,  miles,  it  was  a  wonderful  spectacle. " 
A  colored  man  rode  three  hundred  miles  to  the 
meeting.  The  speaker  might  feel  confident  as  he 
looked  at  the  receding  crowd  that  whatever  the 
mood  of  the  politicians  or  the  magnates  of  com 
merce  might  be,  the  conscience  of  the  people  had 
been  touched;  and  where  the  people  was  master, 
victory  in  the  end  was  sure. 

The  Liberator,  however,  had  not  seen  the  last  of 
mobs.  In  1850,  at  the  time  when  Webster's  apos 
tasy  had  put  fresh  heart  into  the  party  of  slavery  at 
the  North,  and  the  excitement  on  the  subject  had 
been  kindled  anew,  he  went  to  preside  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society  at  New  York. 
He  was  received  by  the  "satanic"  forces  not  only 
with  vituperation,  but  with  menace,  to  which  he  suc 
cumbed  only  so  far  as  to  belie  the  pictures  of  cari 
caturists  by  exchanging  the  turn-down  collar  to 
which  he  had  clung  for  the  stand-up  collar  of  the 
day.  In  his  speech  he  dwelt  on  the  llnconsistency 


between  the  profession  of  the  Christian  churches 
and  their  practice]  contrasting  the  importance  at 
tached  to  the  belief  in  Jesus  with  the  feeble  effect 
of  that  belief  on  character  and  conduct.  First  of 
all  he  arraigned  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  for 
allowing  her  priests  and  members  to  hold  slaves. 
This  called  up  Captain  Rynders,  a  self-made  man, 
who,  from  being  a  professed  gambler  in  the  South 
west,  had  risen  to  local  political  leadership  under  the 
auspices  of  Tammany,  without  merging  the  bravo  in 
the  politician,  and  posed  as  a  defender  of  the  Union 
against  traitors  and  of  Christian  society  against 
infidels.  Captain  Rynders  interpolated  a  question 
whether  there  were  no  other  churches  besides  the 
Catholic  Church  whose  clergy  and  members  held 
slaves.  On  this  point  he  received  prompt  and  full 
satisfaction.  "  Shall  we  look,"  Garrison  went  on  to 
say,  "to  the  Episcopal  Church  for  hope?  It  was  the 
boast  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  shortly  before  his  death, 
that  that  church  was  impregnable  to  anti-slavery. 
That  vaunt  was  founded  on  truth,  for  the  Episcopal 
clergy  and  laity  are  buyers  and  sellers  of  human 
flesh.  We  cannot,  therefore,  look  to  them.  Shall 
we  look  to  the  Presbyterian  Church?  The  whole 
weight  of  it  is  on  the  side  of  oppression.  Ministers 
and  people  buy  and  sell  slaves,  apparently  without 
any  compunctious  visitings  of  conscience.  We  can 
not,  therefore,  look  to  them,  nor  to  the  Baptists,  nor 

(  153  ) 


the  Methodists,  for  they,  too,  are  against  the  slave, 
and  all  the  sects  are  combined  to  prevent  that  ju- 
hilee  which  it  is  the  will  of  God  should  come.  .  .  . 
Be  not  startled  when  I  say  that  a  belief  in  Jesus  is 
no  evidence  of  goodness  (hisses) ;  no,  friends." 

VOICE— " Yes,  it  is!" 

MR.  GARRISON — "Our  friend  says  'yes;'  my  po 
sition  is  'no.'  It  is  worthless  as  a  test,  for  the  rea 
son  I  have  already  assigned  in  reference  to  the  other 
tests.  His  praises  are  sung  in  Louisiana,  Alabama, 
and  the  other  Southern  States  just  as  well  as  in 
Massachusetts. 

CAPTAIN  EYNDERS — "Are  you  aware  that  the 
slaves  in  the  South  have  their  prayer-meetings  in 
honor  of  Christ? 

MR.  GARRISON — "  Not  a  slave-holding  or  a  slave- 
breeding  Jesus !  (Sensation. )  The  slaves  believe  in 
a  Jesus  that  strikes  off  chains.  In  this  country 
Jesus  has  become  obsolete.  A  profession  in  him  is 
no  longer  a  test.  Who  objects  to  his  course  in  Ju- 
dea?  The  old  Pharisees  are  extinct,  and  may  safely 
be  denounced.  Jesus  is  the  most  respectable  person 
in  the  United  States.  (Great  sensation,  and  mur 
murs  of  disapprobation.)  Jesus  sits  in  the  Presi 
dent's  chair  of  the  United  States.  (A  thrill  of  hor 
ror  here  seemed  to  run  through  the  assembly.) 
Zachary  Taylor  sits  there,  which  is  the  same  thing, 
for  he  believes  in  Jesus.  He  believes  in  war  and 

( 154  ) 


the  Jesus  that  'gave  the  Mexicans  hell/        (Sensa 
tion,  uproar,  and  confusion.) 

The  name  of  Zachary  Taylor  aroused  the  politician 
in  the  soul  of  Captain  Rynders,  who  at  once  charged 
home.  Followed  by  his  crew,  shouting  and  swear 
ing,  he  rushed  from  the  gallery  to  the  speaker's 
desk,  and  with  clinched  fist  defied  Garrison  to  say 
anything  against  the  President  of  the  United  States. 
Garrison  disclaimed  any  such  intention,  and  his 
disclaimer  was  enforced  by  Mr.  Thomas  Kane,  a 
young  follower,  who,  not  having  subscribed  the  doc 
trine  of  Non-Resistance,  declared  that  not  a  hair  of 
his  leader's  head  should  be  harmed,  and  shook  his 
fist  in  the  captain's  face.  Afterward  spoke  a 
henchman  of  Rynders,  who  maintained  that  the 
t  blacks  were  not  men,  but  of  the  monkey  tribe.  He 
was  confronted  by  Frederick  Douglass,  saying,  "  I 
cannot  follow  the  gentleman  who  has  just  spoken 
in  his  argument.  I  will  assist  him  in  it,  how 
ever.  I  offer  myself  for  your  examination.  Am 
I  a  man?"  "  You,"  ejaculated  Captain  Rynders, 
"are  not  a  black  man,  you  are  only  half  a  nigger!" 
"  Then, "  replied  Douglass,  "  I  am  half-brother  to 
Captain  Rynders."  At  the  last  session  the  meeting 
was  broken  up  by  the  mob,  which  carried  a  resolu 
tion,  moved,  we  are  told,  by  an  ex-policeman  of 
the  Eighth  Ward  who  had  been  "broken  "  for  being 

found  drunk  in  a  house  of  ill-fame. 

(156) 


"Resolved,  That  this  meeting  does  not  see  suf 
ficient  reasons  for  interfering  with  the  domestic  in 
stitutions  of  the  South,  even  if  it  were  constitutional 
— which  it  is  not — and  therefore  will  not  counte 
nance  fanatical  agitation  whose  aims  and  ends  are 
the  overthrow  of  the  churches,  a  reign  of  anarchy, 
a  division  of  interests,  the  supremacy  of  a  hypocrit 
ical  atheism,  a  general  amalgamation,  and  a  disso 
lution  of  the  Union.  For  these  reasons,  this  meet 
ing  recommends  to  these  humanity -mongers  the 
confining  of  its  [sic]  investigations  to  the  progress 
of  degradation  among  the  negroes  of  the  North,  and 
the  increasing  inequality  and  poverty  of  the  free 
whites  and  blacks  of  New  York  and  similar  places, 
instead  of  scurrility,  blasphemy,  and  vituperation." 

It  was  at  this  time  that,  under  the  terrors  of  the 
new  Fugitive-slave  law,  which  passed  at  the  dicta 
tion  of  the  South  and  swept  away  all  securities  for 
justice,  six  thousand  black  Christians,  a  larger  num 
ber  than  that  of  the  Puritan  exiles,  were  driven 
from  their  homes  in  the  Northern  States  to  a  refuge 
on  British  soil.  The  free  spirit  of  the  people  in 
the  North  was  deeply  stirred,  and  it  was  in  vain 
that  the  chiefs  of  commerce  and  society  held  great 
public  meetings  to  keep  it  down.  When  the  fugi 
tive  slave,  Anthony  Burns,  after  an  attempt .  to 
rescue  him,  was  marched  through  the  streets  of 
Boston  with  all  the  pomp  of  military  escort  to  be 


restored  to  his  master  in  Virginia,  flags  were  hung 
out  at  half-mast  or  draped  in  mourning.  The  clergy 
at  last  were  moved,  though  some  of  their  leaders 
still  came  forward  to  preach  the  moral  and  religious 
duty  of  upholding  the  Union  by  implicit  submission 
to  the  law.  The  law  in  truth  was  clear — not  clearer, 
however,  than  had  been  the  legal  right  of  the  Im 
perial  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  to  tax  the  Colo 
nies  when  Boston  rose  in  rebellion  and  threw  the 
tea  of  British  merchants  into  the  water. 

The  next  episode  in  Garrison's  life  was  pleasant. 
George  Thompson,  now  an  M.P.,  ventured  over 
again  from  England,  a  sign  in  itself  that,  whatever 
might  be  the  backslidings  of  politicians,  Abolition 
as  a  moral  cause  had  gained  ground  among  the  peo 
ple.  He  was  charged  to  present  a  testimonial  to 
Garrison,  in  the  shape  of  a  gold  watch,  commemo 
rating  the  twenty  years  of  the  Liberator's  life.  In 
acknowledgment,  Garrison  said : 

"Mr.  President,  if  this  were  a  rotten  egg  [holding  up  the 
watch]  or  a  brickbat,  I  should  know  how  to  receive  it.  (Laugh 
ter  and  cheers. )  If  these  cheers  were  the  yells  of  a  frantic  mob 
seeking  my  life,  I  should  know  precisely  how  to  behave.  But 
the  presentation  of  this  valuable  gift  is  as  unexpected  by  me  as 
would  be  the  falling  of  the  stars  from  the  heavens ;  and  I  feel 
indescribably  small  before  you  in  accepting  it.  A  gold  watch  ! 
Why,  I  have  been  compensated  in  this  cause  a  million  times 
over !  In  the  darkest  hour,  in  the  greatest  peril,  I  have  felt  just 
at  that  moment  that  it  was  everything  to  be  in  such  a  cause.  I 
know  that  the  praises  which  have  fallen  from  the  lips  of  my  be 
loved  brother  and  faithful  coadjuotr  have  been  spoken  in  all  sin 
cerity  ;  otherwise  they  would  be  intolerable.  I  know  that  I  am 


among  those  not  accustomed  to  flatter,  and  who  do  not  mean  to 
flatter.  I  know  how  to  appreciate  such  demonstrations  as  greet 
me  here  to  night.  Had  it  not  been  for  such  as  are  here  assem 
bled,  we  should  not  have  had  an  Anti- Slavery  struggle.  I  am 
sorry,  my  friends,  that  I  have  not  a  gold  watch  to  present  to 
each  one  of  you.  (Laughter. )  You  all  deserve  one. " 

At  his  interview  with  Miss  Martineau,  Garrison 
had  seemed  embarrassed,  and  had  thanked  her  for 
wishing  to  see  one  so  odious  as  himself,  in  a  man 
ner  which  she  thought  overstrained.  She  after 
ward  remarked  to  the  friend  who  had  brought  them 
together  that  there  appeared  to  her  to  be  a  want  of 
manliness  in  Garrison's  agitation.  The  friend  re 
plied  that  she  "  could  not  know  what  it  was  to  be 
the  object  of  insult  and  hatred  to  the  whole  of  so 
ciety  for  a  series  of  years ;  that  Garrison  could  bear 
what  he  met  with  from  street  to  street,  and  from 
town  to  town ;  but  that  a  kind  look  and  shake  of 
the  hand  from  a  stranger  unmanned  him  for  the 
moment."  A  shock  in  itself  is  disagreeable,  and 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  a  man  long  attempered  to  un 
popularity  as  his  element  would  at  first  feel  a  shock 
on  being  addressed  in  the  unwonted  language  of 
sympathy  and  praise.  Having  grown  familiar  with 
rotten  eggs,  he  would  hardly  know  what  to  do  at 
first  with  a  gold  watch. 

A  testimonial  more  significant  than  a  thousand 
gold  watches  was  at  this  time  presented  to  the 

leader   of   the   moral   movement   against   slavery. 

(158) 


"  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/' while  it  owed  its  literary  ex 
cellence  to  the  creative  genius  of  Mrs.Beecher  Stowe, 
was  morally  the  offspring  of  the  awakening  which 
Garrison  had  done  most  to  bring  about.  Its  time 
liness  as  a  moral  birth  was,  in  part  at  least,  the 
cause  of  its  prodigious  success.  That  its  tangible 
effects  on  votes  or  even  on  public  opinion  were  not 
so  great  as  its  circulation,  we  are  told  by  Wendell 
Phillips,  and  we  should  be  prepared  to  believe.  It 
is  wonderful  how  little  anything  tells  on  votes  un 
der  the  system  of  party  government  except  party ; 
while  as  works  of  fiction  are  not  taken  seriously, 
people  may  cry  or  laugh  over  a  religious,  political, 
or  social  novel  and  yet  lay  it  down  with  their  opin 
ions  little,  and  their  conduct  not  at  all,  changed. 
In  England  not  a  few  cried  over  "Uncle  Tom  "  and 
laughed  over  Topsy,  who  afterward  took  the  part  of 
the  South.  But  " Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  though  it 
might  not  turn  suffrages  on  the  Nebraska  bill,  or 
call  forth  a  monster  petition  for  the  repeal  of  the 
Fugitive-slave  law,  could  not  fail  to  melt  the  icy 
barrier  of  hatred  and  contempt  for  race.  In  this 
respect  its  writer  may  claim  to  share  the  Liber 
ator's  palm.  Garrison  spoke  with  ardent  admira 
tion  of  the  tale,  notwithstanding  that  its  writer's 
views  did  not  wholly  square  with  his  own.  A  cor 
respondence  followed  between  him  and  Mrs.  Beecher 
Stowe,  in  which  Mrs.  Stowe,  when  she  deprecated 

(159) 


needless  bombardment  of  the  Bible  and  the  Sabbath, 
with  which  the  religion  of  common  people  was  bound 
up,  while  their  morality  was  bound  up  with  their 
religion,  had  a  good  deal  of  reason  on  her  side. 
However,  Garrison's  "infidelity"  did  not  prevent  a 
cordial  meeting. 

Meantime  events  were  advancing  to  their  crisis. 
In  1854  the  Nebraska  bill,  by  repudiating  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  threw  open  the  lists  once 
more  for  the  combat  between  Slavery  and  Freedom, 
and  armed  collision  in  the  Territory  soon  followed. 
The  South  had  constrained  the  subservient  politi 
cians  of  Washington  to  pass  the  new  Fugitive-slave 
law.  The  North  refused  to  execute  it.  Massa 
chusetts  answered  it  with  the  personal-liberty  bill, 
whereby  she  hurled  defiance,  not  only  at  the  South, 
but  at  the  Constitution.  Garrison  was  filled  with 
the  spirit  of  the  hour.  On  the  4th  of  July,  1854, 
at  the  open-air  celebration  at  Framingham,  Mass. , 
by  the  Abolitionists,  he  solemnly  burned,  amid 
loud  acclamations,  the  Fugitive-slave  law ;  the  de 
cision  of  Edward  G.  Loring,  the  Massachusetts  offi 
cer  who,  acting  as  a  United  States  Commissioner, 
had  sent  Anthony  Burns  back  to  slavery ;  the  charge 
of  Judge  Benjamin  E.  Curtis  to  the  United  States 
Grand  Jury  in  reference  to  the  "  treasonable  "  assault 
upon  the  court-house  for  the  rescue  of  the  fugitive ; 

and,  finally,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

(160) 


Holding  up  the  Constitution,  he  denounced  it  as  the 
parent  of  all  the  other  iniquities,  branded  it  as  a 
covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement  with  hell, 
and  cast  it  into  the  flames,  exclaiming,  "So  perish 
all  compromises  with  tyranny !  and  let  all  the  peo 
ple  say,  Amen!"  A  loud  response  from  the  people 
went  up  to  heaven.  As  might  have  been  expected, 
a  resporjse  not  less  loud  in  a  different  strain  went 
up  elsewhere.  Yet  Garrison  was  so  far  accepted 
that  when  the  motion  for  the  removal  of  Loring 
from  his  office  came  on  in  the  Massachusetts  Senate, 

a  seat  was  given  him  at  the  President's  side. 

(161) 


XII. 

VERY  few,  so  far  as  we  can  tell  from  speeches  and 
writings,  seem  to  have  foreseen,  or  even  strongly 
surmised,  the  approach  of  civil  war.  Gerrit  Smith 
read  the  meaning  of  the  Kansas  struggle,  but  Sew- 
ard,  the  foremost  of  public  men  on  the  right  side, 
evidently  had  no  idea  that  this  irrepressible  conflict 
was  actually  at  hand ;  he  was  working  for  the  Pres 
idency  on  the  opposite  hypothesis.  Lincoln,  appar 
ently,  had  just  as  little  notion  that  the  house  could 
no  longer  remain  divided  against  itself,  and  the 
time  had  come  when  it  must  be  decided  whether  the 
Union  should  be  all  slave  or  all  free.  Garrison  saw 
no  farther  than  the  rest.  "  Rely  upon  it, "he  said, 
at  a  Disunion  Convention  in  1857,  "there  is  not  an 
intelligent  slave-holder  at  the  South  who  is  for  a 
dissolution  of  the  Union. "  He  was  firmly  persuaded 
that  the  threat  was  only  used  to  bring  the  North 
upon  its  knees.  Reverting  to  those  days  now,  we 
can  distinctly  hear  the  thunder-tread  of  advancing 
destiny  and  see  the  shadows  deepening  on  the  trou 
bled  scene.  The  first  act  of  secession,  as  the  South 
might  have  plausibly  contended,  was  the  Personal- 

(162) 


liberty  law  of  Massachusetts.  The  first  blow  was 
struck  by  the  Southern  fire-eater,  Brooks,  when  he 
felled  Sumner  to  the  earth  in  the  Senate  House  for 
a  speech  which,  it  must  be  owned,  was  as  deadly  a 
provocation  to  Southern  violence  as  words  could 
convey.  But  the  attempt  of  the  South  to  bring 
Kansas  into  the  Union  by  force  as  a  Slave  State  was 
actually  civil  war.  There  were  Garrisonians  who 
provided  themselves  with  Sharp's  rifles,  for  use,  as 
they  said,  "not  against  men,  but  against  beasts!" 
Garrison  himself  protested  that  if  anybody  ought 
to  be  provided  with  a  Sharp's  rifle  it  was  the  slave. 
For  himself,  he  remained  faithful  to  Non- Resist 
ance.  The  sequel  of  the  conflict  in  Kansas  was  the 
raid  of  John  Brown  on  Virginia,  which  furnished 
the  theme  for  the  Marseillaise  of  the  Civil  War. 
Garrison  felt  himself  bound  to  designate  the  raid 
in  the  Liberator  as  a  misguided,  wild,  and  ap 
parently  insane,  though  disinterested  and  well-in 
tended,  effort  of  insurrection  to  emancipate  the 
slaves  in  Virginia.  "  Our  views  of  war  and  blood 
shed,"  he  said,  "even  in  the  best  of  causes,  are  too 
well  known  to  need  repeating  here ;  but  let  no  one 
who  glories  in  the  Revolutionary  struggle  of  1776 
deny  the  right  of  the  slaves  to  imitate  the  example 
of  our  fathers."  In  a  subsequent  number  he,  al 
ways  with  a  reserve  in  favor  of  Non-Resistance, 
lauded  Brown  as  a  hero  to  be  remembered  with  Wal- 

(163) 


lace  and  Tell,  Washington  and  Warren ;  and,  judg 
ing  him  by  the  code  of  Bunker  Hill,  the  mate  of 
any  who  ever  wielded  the  sword  for  liberty.  In 
the  general  outburst  of  sympathy  he  saw  a  proof 
of  the  marvellous  change  wrought  by  thirty  years 
of  moral  agitation.  "  Ten  years  since,  there  were 
thousands  who  could  not  endure  any  lightest  word 
of  rebuke  of  the  South;  they  can  now  easily  swal 
low  John  Brown  whole,  and  his  rifle  into  the  bar 
gain.  In  firing  his  gun  he  has  merely  told  us  what 
;  time  of  day  it  is.  It  is  high  noon,  thank  God!" 
Not  so  thought  those  the  paramount  allegiance  of 
whose  hearts  had  always  been  to  the  Union,  and 
who  now  sent  up  cries  of  alarm  on  all  sides,  and 
waved  the  white  flag  to  the  South.  Even  Henry 
Wilson,  Simmer's  colleague  in  the  Senate,  deplored 
the  burden  laid  upon  the  Republican  party  by  ar 
raying  against  it  "  that  intense,  passionate,  and  ve 
hement  spirit  of  nationality  which  glows  in  the 
bosoms  of  the  American  people."  The  logic  of  the 
head  and  the  heart,  he  said,  taught  him  to  regard 
all  such  movements,  whether  in  the  North  or  in  the 
South,  as  crimes  against  liberty.  The  banner  which 
he  desired  them  to  follow  was  that  of  "Liberty  and 
Union."  There  was  even  a  last  splutter  of  mob- 
violence  at  an  anti-slavery  meeting  at  Boston,  mem 
orable  for  having  brought  on  the  anti-slavery  plat 
form,  in  defence  of  freedom  of  speech,  Emerson, 

(164) 


whose    attitude    toward    Alx)litionism    had    before 
l>een  rather  philosophic. 

Desire  what  Wilson  and  patriots  of  his  class  would, 
fate  was  irresistibly  ranging  all  of  them  under  the 
banner  of  Liberty  but  not  of  Union,  at  least  not  of 
Union  till  Liberty  should  have  prevailed.  The  po 
litical  combinations,  after  much  shifting  and  cross 
ing,  settled  down  on  ""one  side  into  a  well-defined 
party  of  the  North,  under  the  name  of  the  Republi 
can  party,  confronting  the  united  South.  Elements 
there  still  were  at  the  North  belonging  to  the  oppo 
site  ends  of  society,  a  plutocracy  at  one  end,  a  mob 
at  the  other,  which  adhered  to  the  Southern  alliance 
and  its  emoluments,  under  the  title  of  the  .Demo 
cratic  party,  and  afterward  furnished  respectively 
the  Copperheads  of  pro-slavery  drawing-rooms  and 
the  aiiti -draft  rioters  of  the  slums  of  New  York. 
But  the  armies  were  formed,  in  the  main,  on  Mason 
and  Dixon's  line,  and  Destiny  had  given  the  signal 
for  battle. 

Presidential  elections  are  fraught  with  danger — 
among  other  respects  in  this,  that  they  bring  every 
issue  to  a  violent  head.  The  contest  between  Bu 
chanan  and  Fremont  was  the  first  engagement,  and 
resulted  in  a  numerical  victory,  morally  ominous  of 
coming  defeat  for  the  South.  The  second  and 
decisive  engagement  was  the  contest  out  of  which 
Abraham  Lincoln,  who  held  that  a  house  could  not 

(165) 


remain  divided  against  itself,  came  as  President  of 
the  United  States.  Lincoln  might  profess,  and  in 
all  sincerity  profess,  his  entire  loyalty  to  the  Consti 
tution,  and  his  conscientious  determination  to  secure 
to  slavery  its  full  pound  of  legal  flesh.  But  the 
South  saw  that  the  North  had  shaken  off  its  yoke, 
and  that  the  practical  securities  were  gone.  The 
Southern  leaders  now  took  their  leave  of  Congress. 
They  were  allowed  to  depart,  avowedly  for  the  pur 
pose  of  rebellion,  by  the  executive,  which,  had  it 
been  strong  enough  at  once  to  arrest  them  all  and 
hold  them  personally  responsible  for  any  rising 
against  Federal  authority  in  their  States,  .might 
possibly  have  defeated  their  design. 

Then  followed  a  scene  which  showed  the  differ 
ence  in  value  between  the  political  and  the  moral 
opposition  to  slavery.  Threatened  now  in  earnest 
with  the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  the  mere  politi 
cians  fell  upon  their  knees,  and  besought  the  South 
to  forgive  the  rebellious  conduct  of  the  North  and 
return,  offering  immense  concessions  as  the  price. 
They  were  ready  to  enact  that  slavery  should  never 
be  abolished  in  the  District  without  the  consent  of 
Maryland  and  Virginia ;  to  enjoin  Northern  States 
to  repeal  all  their  Personal-liberty  acts;  to  have 
the  case  of  the  fugitive  slave  tried,  not  in  the  free 
State  to  which  he  had  fled,  but  in  the  slave  State  to 
which  he  belonged;  to  restrain  Congress  and  the 


Territorial  legislatures  from  prohibiting  slavery  in 
a  Territory;  to  restore  the  Missouri  Compromise 
line,  with  a  national  guarantee  for  slavery  on  the 
south  of  it;  to  debar  any  but  men  of  Caucasian  race 
from  ever  voting  for  any  officer  of  the  National 
Government.  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  the  heir 
of  the  statesman  who  had  nobly  fought  for  the 
right  of  petition,  and  Himself  afterward  the  admira 
ble  ambassador  of  the  Federal  Government  in  Eng 
land,  was  so  transported  by  devotion  to  the  Union 
as  to  propose  a  security  for  slavery  such  as  no 
Southern  man  had  ever  ventured  to  demand.  He 
moved  to  enact  that  "no  amendment  of  the  Con 
stitution,  having  for  its  object  any  interference  with 
slavery,  should  originate  with  any  State  that  did 
not  recognize  that  relation  within  its  own  limits,  or 
be  valid  without  the  assent  of  every  one  of  the  States 
composing  the  Union."  This  proposition  was  op 
posed  by  only  three  members  of  a  House  Committee 
of  thirty-three.  The  same  committee  reported  in 
favor  of  the  admission  of  New  Mexico,  then  includ 
ing  Arizona,  as  a  slave  State.  An  amendment  of 
the  Constitution,  which?  though  less  stringent  than 
that  proposed  by  Mr.  Adams,  would  yet,  as  Mr. 
Elaine  says,  have  made  slavery  perpetual  in  the 
United  States,  as  far  as  any  influence  or  power  of 
the  National  Government  could  affect  it,  actually 
passed  the  House  of  Representatives  by  a  majority 

(IfiT) 


of  133  to  65,  and  the  Senate  by  a  two-thirds  majority, 
and  was  prevented  from  being  submitted  to  the 
States  only  by  the  outbreak  of  civil  war.  *  Noth 
ing,  therefore,  but  the  madness  of  the  South  pre 
vented  the  absolute  and  irrevocable  surrender  of 
the  North  to  slavery,  so  far  as  the  politicians  were 
concerned.  Testimony  of  more  appalling  force 
could  not  have  been  given  to  the  value  of  the  moral 
movement  of  which  Garrison  had  been  the  head. 
What  were  the  evils  of  excessive  enthusiasm  in  a 
good  cause,  or  of  undue  violence  of  language,  com 
pared  with  those  of  the  political  weakness  and 
disloyalty  to  principle  which  dictated  this  offer  of 
capitulation? 

Garrison  could  not  fail  to  see  how  complete  was 
the  excuse  afforded  by  the  conduct  of  Congress  to 
onlookers  in  Great  Britain  and  elsewhere  for  mis 
understanding  the  character  and  object  of  the  con 
flict.  They  were  justified  in  taking  it  henceforth  to 
be  a  mere  struggle  for  aggrandizement,  with  which 
they  were  bound  to  sympathize  no  further  than 
they  desired  the  greatness  of  the  American  Eepub- 
lic.  It  is  to  the  lasting  credit  of  the  people  of  Great 
Britain  that  the  mass  of  them  did,  nevertheless, 
discern  that  practically  this  was  a  war  between 
freedom  and  slavery,  and  that  they  faced  the  cotton 
famine  rather  than  aid  slavery  against  freedom. 

*  See  Elaine's  "Twenty  Years  of  Congress,"  I.,  266. 
( 168 ) 


The  South,  too,  might  well  feel  thenceforth  that 
the  moral  professions  of  the  North  were  hypocrisy, 
and  that  the  real  object  of  the  invader  was  con  quest, 
while  their  own  flag  was  that  of  patriotism  fighting 
for  national  independence.  Warrants  for  rebellion, 
when  the  governed  were  dissatisfied  with  the  Gov 
ernment,  the  Secessionists  might  have  found  in  the 
writings  of  the  whole  train  of  American  publicists 
and  orators  from  Jefferson  to  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  South,  as  we  know,  spurned  the  offer  of  sub 
mission,  and  then  ensued  the  greatest  civil  war  in 
history.  Which  side  struck  the  first  blow  is  a  ques 
tion  of  no  moral  importance.  It  may  perhaps  be 
said  that  the  North  did  in  ordering  Fort  Sumter  to 
be  revictualled  at  all  hazards.  War  was  the  decree 
of  Fate.  The  North  and  South  were  two  nations, 
radically  opposed  to  each  other  in  political  character 
and  requirements  as  in  social  structure.  The  con 
tinuance  of  their  Union  without  the  abolition  of 
slavery  was  impossible ;  of  the  abolition  of  slavery 
there  was  practically  no  hope  in  the  absence  of  a 
supreme  and  arbitrating  power;  the  dissolution, 
therefore,  was  inevitable ;  Garrison's  policy  alone 
could  have  made  it  peaceful. 

In  perfect  consistency  with  his  principles,  Gar 
rison  welcomed  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  by  the 
South.  Separation,  thenceforth,  was  inevitable. 
From  the  covenant  with  death  and  the  agreement 

(169) 


with  hell  the  North  was  set  free  by  the  hand  of  God 
acting  through  the  madness  of  the  South.  "  Now, 
then,"  said  Garrison,  "let  there  he  a  convention  of 
the  Free  States  called  to  organize  an  independent 
government  on  free  and  just  principles:  let  the 
South  take  the  public  property  on  which  it  has  laid 
piratical  hands,  let  it  take  even  the  Capital  if  it  will, 
and  depart  in  peace  to  organize  its  own  confederation 
of  violence  and  tyranny."  But  he  had  scarcely 
penned  the  words  when  all  thought  of  peaceful  sepa 
ration  was  swept  away  by  the  torrent  of  public  wrath 
evoked  by  the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter.  Yet  the 
thought  came  back  to  many  minds  after  Chancel- 
lorsville,  and  has  perhaps  been  often  called  up  again 
by  the  desperate  difficulties  of  reconstruction. 

With  a  war  merely  for  the  Union,  Garrison  evi 
dently  could  not  have  sympathized.  He,  however, 
clearly  discerned  from  the  beginning  that  whatever 
might  be  the  ostensible  object,  it  would  be  a  war 
for  the  extirpation  of  slavery.  He  wisely  put  off  the 
meeting  of  the  Anti-Slavery  Society,  which  might 
have  declared  against  the  action  of  the  Government 
and  the  Republican  party.  The  old  Union,  he  said, 
had  gone  out  of  existence  and  its  restoration  with 
pro-slavery  compromise  was  impossible.  "The  con 
flict  is  really  between  the  civilization  of  freedom 
and  the  barbarism  of  slavery — between  the  principles 
of  democracy  and  the  doctrines  of  absolutism — be- 


tween  the  free  North  and  the  maii-imbruting  South ; 
therefore,  to  this  extent,  hopeful  for  the  cause  of 
impartial  liberty.     So  that  we  cannot  endorse  the 
assertion,  that  'this  is  the  darkest  hour  for  the  slave 
in  the  history  of  American   servitude.'     No,  it  is/ 
the  brightest!"     Lincoln  and  the  Republicans  were' 
instruments  in  the  hands  of  God  for  the  achievement 
of  Emancipation. 

But  could  a  Non- Resistant  sympathize  with  war 
at  all,  even  for  the  liberation  of  his  kind?  Garrison 
practically  solved  that  question  for  himself  as  it 
was  solved  by  John  Bright,  who  was  also,  though 
not  exactly  a  non-resistant,  an  avowed  enemy  of  all 
war.  A  war  really  again  st  slavery  had  been  brought 
about  by  other  agencies  than  his,  and  certainly  not 
through  his  fault.  The  world  was,  to*  use  his  own 
expression,  not  on  the  plane  of  Jesus,  but  on  a  much 
lower  plane,  and  he  had  to  look  at  it  as  it  was. 
The  practical  question  was  whether  in  the  conflict 
of  forces,  neither  of  them  perhaps  hallowed,  the 
more  unhallowed  or  the  less  unhallowed  should  pre 
vail.  Whatever  the  professions  of  the  Unionist, 
government  might  be,  practically  this  was  a  war 
against  slavery ;  nor  till  it  manifestly  became  a  war 
against  slavery  was  Garrison's  sympathy  declared. 
What  he  said  himself  was  that  when  he  called  the 
Union  "  a  covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement 

with  hell,"  he  had  not  foreseen  that  Death  and  Hell 

(171) 


would  secede.  This  was  rather  a  playful  evasion  of 
the  question  of  conscience  than  an  answer  to  it. 
The  answer  was  that  when  a  battle  was  actually 
going  on  between  good  and  evil,  the  doctrine  of 
non-resistance  would  have  been  not  only  visionary, 
but  crazy,  if  it  had  forbidden  you  to  take  the  side  of 
good. 

To  be  "on  the  plane  of  Jesus,"  according  to  the 
literal  interpretation  of  Christ's  words,  had  been 
Garrison's  aspiration,  and  it  was  an  aspiration 
which  those  who  propose  to  take  the  Gospel  as  their 
inspired  rule  of  life  are  hardly  entitled  to  censure 
or  deride.  But  the  world  being  "on  a  plane  which 
was  not  that  of  Jesus, "for  Garrison,  as  a  citizen 
and  a  member  of  society,  to  act  in  conformity  with 
his  individual  ideal  would  have  been  to  renounce  all 
influence  for  good  over  the  world,  and  almost  to 
give  up  commerce  with  his  kind. 

Garrison's  peculiar  doctrines,  we  may  surmise, 
had  been  partly  the  offspring  of  circumstance.  He 
had  been  against  earthly  government  when  the  gov 
ernment  of  his  country  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Slave 
power ;  he  had  been  against  any  use  of  force  to  com 
pel  obedience  to  rulers  when  the  Slave  power  had 
the  force  on  its  side;  he  had  been  against  the  ascen 
dancy  of  the  churches  and  the  clergy  so  long  as  the 
churches  and  the  clergy  were  upholding  or  conniv 
ing  at  slavery;  he  had  been  against  the  authority 

( 172 ) 


of  the  Bible  because  the  Bible  was  cited,  with  appar 
ent  justice,  as  authorizing  a  slave  code;  he  had 
been  against  the  Sabbath  because  clergymen  had 
denounced  the  holding  of  abolition  meetings  on  that 
day.  The  churches  and  the  clergy,  the  Protestant 
churches  and  clergy  at  least,  had  now,  with  the 
Government  and  the  force,  come  over  to  the  side  of 
right. 

The  Draft,  however,  still  brought  a  knotty  case  of 
conscience  for  the  non-resistant.  What  was  the  duty 
of  a  non-resistant  Abolitionist  drafted  as  a  soldier? 
To  provide  a  substitute  was  morally  the  same  thing 
as  fighting  yourself.  But  could  the  non-resistant 
lawfully  pay  the  fine  to  a  fighting  government? 
concluded  that  he  could  upon  com 


pulsion,  the  alternative  being  imprisonment  or  other 
penalty.  Nobody  who  had  not  abstained  from  vot 
ing  under  a  Constitution  which  established  slavery, 
the  Liberator  held,  could  claim  the  privilege  of  con 
science  as  an  exemption  from  the  Draft.  Exemp 
tions  on  sectarian  grounds  he  pronounced  utterly 
unjust.  This  hit  the  commercial  Quakers,  who  had 
held  Abolitionism  at  arm's-length. 

Garrison  did  not  at  once  trust  or  support  Abra 
ham  Lincoln.  There  was  no  reason  why  he  should. 
Lincoln,  when  he  appeared  upon  the  grand  scene, 
must  have  been  in  Garrison's  eyes  a  politician.  He 

had  entered  public  life  through  the  same  portal  as 

(178) 


other  politicians,  which  was  that  of  party  rather 
than  of  principle  or  truth.  The  moral  depth  and 
fervor,  the  tenderness  and  pensiveness,  which  after 
ward,  by  their  manifestations  in  a  position  of  unique 
gravity  and  responsibility,  distinguished  Lincoln 
from  all  other  Presidents  and  public  men  of  the 
United  States,  and  appealed  with  unrivalled  force 
to  the  heart  of  the  American  people,  were  not  then 
visible  to  any  eye  outside  the  circle  of  his  own 
friends.*  His  opposition  to  slavery,  so  far  as  ap 
peared,  was  strictly  cnstitutional  and  conservative 
—that  is,  practically  futile .  He  had  never  denounced 
it  morally  as  a  burning  wrong  with  which  there 
could  be  no  compromise.  He  had  said  that  "a 
house  divided  against  itself  would  not  stand,"  and 
that  "the  day  must  come  when  the  Union  would 
be  all  slave  or  all  free:"  but  was  not  Seward  the 
author  of  the  equally  memorable  phrase,  "irrepres 
sible  conflict,"  and  had  not  Seward,  in  immediate 
view  of  the  nomination  to  the  Presidency,  shown 
pretty  plainly,  by  his  softened  language,  that,  so  far 
as  he  was  concerned,  the  conflict  would  be  repressed  ? 
President  Lincoln  set  out  with  a  pledge  of  his  in 
tention  to  secure  to  slavery,  in  full  measure,  all  its 
constitutional  rights.  He  may  have  foreseen  that 
events  were  coming  which  would  absolve  him  from 

*  They  are  now  more  than  ever  visible  to  every  eye  in  the  ad 
mirable  esbay  of  Mr,  Carl  Schurz. 

(174) 


that  pledge ;  but  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that, 
had  events  taken  another  turn,  the  pledge  would 
have  been  redeemed.  Long  after  the  commence 
ment  of  the  war, -and  when  the  hearts  of  thorough 
going  Abolitionists  were  almost  sick  with  waiting 
for  Emancipation,  he  propounded  a  scheme  for  buy 
ing  out  slavery  which  now  strikes  us  as  strangely 
weak  in  principle  as  "well  as  in  its  details.  His 
scheme  even  recognized  the  lawfulness  of  re-estab 
lishing  slavery  by  providing  that,  if  slavery  were 
anywhere  re-established,  the  State  should  refund  the 
money  paid  for  compensation.  Twice  Lincoln  rec 
ommended  this  plan,  and  he  would  have  postponed 
Emancipation  till  the  existing  slave-owners  were 
dead,  giving  the  existing  slaves  only  the  "  inspirit 
ing  assurance"  of  freedom  to  be  enjoyed  by  their 
children.  To  explain  and  justify  his  course,  it  is 
needful  always  to  bear  in  mind  that  he  was  not 
master  even  of  the  North,  but  only  the  constitu 
tional  President,  with  limited  powers,  of  a  group  of 
States  in  which  there  was  still  a  strong  party  op 
posed  to  the  war,  and  in  which  the  bulk  of  the  peo 
ple  had  taken  arms,  ostensibly  at  least,  not  to  put 
down  slavery,  but  to  preserve  the  Union,  uphold 
the  law,  and  avenge  an  insult  to  the  national  flag. 
Garrison,  however,  never  offered  Lincoln  any  per 
verse  or  factious  opposition.  From  the  moment 

when  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  was  issued  he 

(175) 


heartily  supported  him,  and  he  declared  in  favor  of 
his  re-election.  His  course  in  relation  to  this  ques 
tion  widely  differed  from  that  of  Wendell  Phillips, 
whose  impetuous  and  uncompromising  spirit  could 
not  endure  or  forgive  the  President's  hesitation, 
and  who,  unmollified  by  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation,  set  himself  fiercely  against  Lincoln's  re 
election. 

For  Abolitionists  who  were  not  non-resistants  the 
path  of  duty,  a,s  Garrison  held,  was  plain.  The 
Government  having  by  the  Emancipation  Procla 
mation  declared  itself  wholly  on  the  side  of  liberty, 
it  could  "receive  the  sanction  and  support  of  every 
Abolitionist,  whether  in  a  moral  or  military  point 
of  view."  In  fact,  Garrison  became  a  non-combat 
ant  War  Republican  with  his  heart  very  thoroughly 
in  the  war.j 

In  one  military  scene.  Garrison  actually  formed  a 
conspicuous  figure.  He  and  Wendell  Phillips  were 
present  when  Andrew,  the  great  war  governor  of 
Massachusetts,  put  the  State  and  national  colors 
into  the  hands  of  Colonel  Shaw,  the  devoted  com 
mander  of  the  first  negro  regiment  raised  for  the 
service  of  the  United  States.  He  saw  the  regiment 
march,  with  soldierly  bearing  and  amid  enthusi 
astic  cheers,  singing  the  "  John  Brown  "  song  along 
the  streets  of  Boston,  himself  standing  on  the  very 
spot  over  which  he  had  been  dragged  by  the  mob  of 

(176) 


1835.  When  he  beheld  the  barrier  of  race  thus 
thrown  down  and  the  manhood  of  the  negro  so  sig 
nally  recognized,  he  might  well  think  that  the 
hardest  of  all  victories  had  been  won.  He  might 
exultingly  contrast  the  spectacle  before  his  eyes 
with  the  treatment  of  Frederick  Douglass  when 
they  were  together  on  their  lecturing  tour,  by  the 
rowdy  who  collared  him  in  the  car,  or  by  the  keep 
ers  of  refreshment  rooms  who  drove  him  from  the 
table.  Unhappily,  no  transport  of  emotion  could 
efface  difference  of  color  or  physical  repulsion :  the 
heyday  of  enthusiasm  over,  nature  would  resume 
her  sway  and  the  difficulty  of  race  would  return. 
The  recognition  of  the  negro's  equality,  however, 
by  his  enlistment  as  a  soldier  helped  to  bring  to  a 
head  for  the  last  time  the  violence  from  which  Gar 
rison  and  other  Abolitionists  had  once  suffered.  A 
mob  rose  in  New  York,  shot  negroes,  hanged  them 
to  lamp-posts,  hunted  them  down,  maltreated  them, 
threw  them  into  the  river,  burned  a  colored  orphan 
asylum  to  the  ground  and  sacked  the  Colored  Sail 
ors'  Home.  The  Union  soldiers  who  were  at  last 
brought  up  to  quell  the  rising  were  not  non-resist 
ants,  and  a  thousand  of  the  rioters  paid  for  the  out 
rage  with  their  lives. 

There  was  a  scene  still  more  historic  when,  the 
Union  troops  having  entered  Charleston,  Garrison 
stood  bf  side  a  colossal  marble  slab  on  which,  as  a 

(177)    ' 


great  man's  sufficient  epitaph,  was  inscribed  the 
single  name  "  Calhoun . "  Amid  all  the  medley  of 
motives,  political,  social,  or  commercial,  amid  .all 
that  was  confused,  equivocal,  and  doubtful,  those 
two  men  had  clearly  embodied  the  moral  forces,  the 
antagonism  of  which  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole. 
Garrison  represented  the  thorough -going  belief  that 
slavery  was  evil,  Calhoun  the  thorough-going  belief 
that  it  was  good.  Each  faith,  like  all  faith,  was 
strong  in  its  way.  The  spirit  of  Calhoun  had  fought 
desperately  and  long.  To  subdue  him  had  cost 
lives  and  treasure  untold ;  but  he  had  succumbed 
at  last,  and  his  conqueror  stood  beside  his  grave  in 
the  very  heart  of  his  dominion,  close  to  the  spot 
where  Abolitionist  literature  had  been  burned  amid 
the  acclaim  of  thousands,  and  on  ground  where  a 
few  years  before  no  Abolitionist's  life  would  have 
been  worth  an  hour's  purchase.  Garrison's  preach 
ing  could  have  done  nothing  without  the  strong 
hearts  and  arms  which  gave  effect  to  it  on  so  many 
fields.  But  it  was  largely  by  the  moral  force  which 
he,  more  than  any  other  man,  had  set  in  motion,  that 
those  hearts  were  fired  and  those  arms  were  nerved. 
The  hatred  of  slavery  gained  strength  and  came 
more  and  more  to  the  front  as  the  struggle  went 
on.  Nor  does  it  seem  likely  that  the  mere  desire 
to  regain  the  political  and  commercial  advantages 

of  the  Union  would  have  carried  the  nation  through 

.(178) 


the  reverses  which  marked  the  first  years  of  the 
war,  and  which  led  many  even  of  the  warmest 
friends  of  the  North  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic 
to  think  that  the  South  had  shown  itself  uncon 
querable,  and  the  wisest  course  would  be  to  let  it- 
depart  in  peace.  Certainly  the  Emancipation  Proc 
lamation  was  the  moral  turning-point  of  the  war. 

From  Charleston,  where  he  received  an  ovation 
of  negro  gratitude,  Garrison  went  to  visit  his  son 
in  the  neighboring  camp.  There  he  found  twelve 
hundred  plantation  slaves  just  swept  by  the  troops 
from  the  interior.  He  called  upon  them  to  give 
three  cheers  for  freedom.  To  his  surprise  they  were 

silent :  they  did"  not  know  how  to  cheer. 

(179) 


XIII. 

THE  South  having  been  subdued,  and  the  Thir 
teenth  Amendment  of  the  Constitution,  which  for 
ever  abolished  slavery,  having  been  virtually  carried, 
Garrison's  work  was  done.  He  had  the  rare  good 
sense  to  know  that  his  work  was  done,  and  to  act 
decisively  on  that  conviction  by  laying  down  his 
controversial  pen,  withdrawing  his  journal,  resign 
ing  his  leadership,  and  retiring  into  the  peace  of 
private  life.  He  showed  hereby  the  purity  of  his 
aim  and  character.  If  personal  ambition,  pride  of 
leadership,  the  love  of  excitement,  the  craving  for 
self-display  enters  as  alloy  into  the  motives  of  an 
agitator,  he  is  pretty  sure  when  one  agitation  has 
reached  its  goal  to  be  hurried  on  to  another.  Re 
pose  and  silence  become  intolerable.  Brougham 
never  could  have  rested;  no  sooner  was  Catholic 
Emancipation  passed  than  O'Connell  took  up  the 
Repeal  of  the  Union;  and  Wendell  Phillips,  the 
king  of  the  platform,  was  carried  on  by  the  impetus 
of  his  own  eloquence  and  the  combativeness  of  his 
nature  from  agitation  to  agitation  till  he  died. 
.  Was  the  Anti-Slavery  Society  to  be  kept  in  exist- 

'(180) 


ence  now  that  its  object  had  been  gained?  Wen 
dell  Phillips  vehemently  contended  that  it  should. 
Garrison  pronounced  in  favor  of  its  dissolution,  and 
his  words  are  a  lesson  to  agitators: 

"My  friends,  let  us  not  any  longer  affect  superiority  when  we 
are  not  superior — let  us  not  assume  to  be  better  than  other  people 
when  we  are  not  any  better.  When  they  are  reiterating  all 
that  we  say,  and  disposed  to  do  all  that  we  wish  to  have  done, 
what  more  can  we  ask?  And  yet  I  know  the  desire  to  keep  to 
gether,  because  of  past  memories  and  labors,  is  a  very  natural 
one.  But  let  us  challenge  and  command  the  respect  of  the  na 
tion,  and  of  the  friends  of  freedom  throughout  the  world,  by 
a  wise  and  sensible  conclusion.  Of  course,  we  are  not  to  cease 
laboring  in  regard  to  whatever  remains  to  be  done,  but  let  us 
work  with  the  millions,  and  not  exclusively  as  the  American 
Anti-Slavery  Society.  As  co-workers  are  everywhere  found,  as 
our  voices  are  everywhere  listened  to  with  approbation  and  our 
sentiments  cordially  endorsed,  let  us  not  continue  to  be  isolated. 
My  friend,  Mr.  Phillips,  says  he  has  been  used  to  isolation,  and 
he  thinks  he  can  endure  it  some  time  longer.  My  answer  is, 
that  when  a  man  stands  alone  with  God  for  truth,  for  liberty, 
for  righteousness,  he  may  glory  in  his  isolation ;  but  when  the 
principle  which  kept  him  isolated  has  at  last  conquered,  then  to 
glory  in  isolation  seenis  to  me  no  evidence  of  courage  or  fidelity. " 

The  vote  being  taken,  Garrison's  resolution  was 
rejected  by  118  to  48,  and  Wendell  Phillips  pre 
vailed.  Garrison  then  retired  in  a  modest  and  ami 
able  way,  without  showing  the  slightest  mortifica 
tion  and  emphatically  putting  aside  all  attempts  to 
sow  jealousy  between  Phillips  and  himself.  Phil 
lips  was  not  less  generous,  and  avowed  that  from 
Garrison  his  best  inspirations  had  always  been  de 
rived.  There  was  afterward  a  passage  of  arms 

between  them,  but  in  this  the  challenger  appears 

(181) 


to  have  been  Phillips,  who  in  his  haste  accused 
Garrison  and  other  retiring  members  of  deserting 
the  cause.  It  seems  that  Garrison  would  have  been 
willing  to  remain  with  the  Society  till  the  ratifica 
tion  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment  was  formally 
complete,  had  he  believed  that  this  would  be  the 
end;  but  he  knew  that  when  the  last  State  had 
voted,  the  fiery  spirits  would  be  fiery  still,  and  the 
question  of  dissolving  the  Society  would  have  to  be 
faced  again. 

The  Liberator  was  in  Garrison's  own  hands,  and 
he  decided  at  once  that,  having  fulfilled  its  mission, 
it  should  cease  to  appear.  The  closing  scene  of  its 
existence  may  be  given  in  the  words  of  his  sons : 

"For  the  one  remaining  number  of  the  Liberator,  Mr.  Gar 
rison's  children  besought  him  to  at  once  prepare  his  valedictory 
editorial,  leaving  to  others  the  drudgery  of  the  proof-reading 
and  mechanical  details  of  the  paper.  The  proofs  he  insisted  on 
reading  himself,  and  the  outside  pages  ho  also  'made  up  '  from 
the  galleys,  but  the  inside  pages  he  finally  allowed  his  friend 
and  assistant,  Winchell  Yerrinton,  to  make  up  under  his  direc 
tion  ;  a  considerable  portion  of  the  editorial  page  being  given 
to  letters  of  congratulation  and  farewell  from  old  and  tried 
friends.  When  these  were  inserted,  less  than  a  column's  space 
was  left  in  which  to  complete  his  valedictory,  and,  the  number 
being  already  late  for  the  press,  he  wrote  the  remainder  of  it 
with  the  printers  standing  at  his  elbow  for  '  copy, '  which  he 
doled  out  to  them  a  few  lines  at  a  time.  The  final  paragraph 
,he  set  with  his  own  hands,  and  then  stepped  to  the  imposing 
table  or  stone  to  insert  it  in  the  vacant  place  awaiting  it. 
Evening  had  come,  and  the  little  group  in  the  printing  office 
gathered  silently  about  to  witness  the  closing  act.  As  the  form 
was  locked  for  the  last  time  by  the  senior  Yerrinton,  all  present 
felt  a  sense  of  loss  and  bereavement.  Mr.  Garrison  alone  pre- 
082) 


served  his  wonted  cheerfulness  and   serenity.     From   the  death 
hed  of  the  Liberator  he  \vent  directly  to  a  committee  meeting 
of  the  New  England  Freedmen's  Aid  Society,  his  face  toward 
the  resurrection  and  the  life  of  Freedom. " 

"Most  happy  am  I,'' said  Garrison,  "to  be  no 
longer  in  conflict  with  the  mass  of  my  fellow-coun 
trymen  on  the  subject  of  slavery.  For  no  man  of 
any  refinement  or  sensibility  can  be  indifferent  to 
the  approbation  of  his  fellow-men,  if  it  be  rightly 
earned."  His  action  showed  that,  in  so  saying,  he 
spoke  from  his  heart. 

The  last  number  of  the  Liberator  contained  the 
valedictory,  but  the  preceding  number  had  con 
tained  the  paean,  which  may  be  taken  as  sincere, 
and  assuredly  was  not  penned  by  an  infidel : 

"  Rejoice,  and  give  praise  and  glory  to  God,  ye  who  have  so 
long  and  so  untiringly  participated  in  all  the  trials  and  vicissi 
tudes  of  that  mighty  conflict !  Having  sown  in  tears,  now  reap 
in  joy.  Hail,  redeemed,  regenerated  America!  Hail,  North 
and  South,  East  and  West !  Hail,  the  cause  of  Peace,  of  Lib- 
erty,  of  Righteousness,  thus  mightily  strengthened  and  signally 
glorified !  Hail,  the  Present,  with  its  transcendent  claims,  its 
new  duties,  its  imperative  obligations,  its  sublime  opportuni 
ties !  Hail,  the  Future,  with  its  pregnant  hopes,  its  glorious 
promises,  its  illimitable  powers  of  expansion  and  develop 
ment  !  Hail,  ye  ransomed  millions,  no  more  to  be  chained, 
scourged,  mutilated,  bought  and  sold  in  the  market,  robbed  of 
all  rights,  hunted  as-  partridges  upon  the  mountains  in  your 
flight  to  obtain  deliverance  from  the  house  of  bondage,  branded 
and  scorned  as  a  connecting  link  between  the  human  race  and 
the  brute  creation !  Hail,  all  nations,  tribes,  kindreds,  and 
peoples,  'made  of  one  blood,'  interested  in  a  common  redemp 
tion,  heirs  of  the  same  immortal  destiny  !  Hail,  angels  in  glory 
and  spirits  of" the  just  made  perfect,  and  tune  your  harps  anew, 
singing,  '  Great  and  marvellous  are  Thy  works,  Lord  God,  Al- 

(183) 


mighty  ;  just  and  true  are  Thy  ways,  Thou  King  of  Saints  !  Who 
shall  not  fear  Thee,  O  Lord,  and  glorify  Thy  name?  for  Thou 
only  art  holy  :  for  all  nations  shall  come  and  worship  before 
Thee  for  Thy  judgments  are  made  manifest. '  ' 

He  might  retire  and  repose,  but  of  course  he  could 
not  be  idle.  He  became  a  regular  contributor  to 
the  Independent,  and  wrote  in  support  of  reforms 
which  he  had  already  espoused,  notably  of  Prohibi 
tion,  or,  as  its  advocates  called  it,  Temperance,  the 
first  cause  to  which  he  had  dedicated  his  pen.  As 
a  sworn  enemy  of  race-distinction  and  caste,  he  laid 
his  familiar  lance  in  rest  against  the  politicians  who, 
in  contempt  of  treaties,  were  advocating  the  exclu 
sion  of  the  Chinese;  nor  had  he  much  difficulty  in. 
unhorsing  opponents  whose  arguments,  whether 
social,  industrial,  or  religious,  were  mere  subterfuge, 
their  real  motive  being  their  desire  to  capture  the 
Irish  and  German  vote.  On  one  subject  which  he 
treated,  his  views  had  undergone  a  notable  change. 
Early  in  life  he  had  been  taken,  as  we  have  seen, 
with  protection  to  native  industry.  But  in  his 
great  struggle  for  the  freedom  of  the  slave  he  had 
learned  to  embrace  freedom  of  every  kind,  and  to 
trust  its  beneficence  without  reserve.  He  saw,  what 
the  workingmen  of  his  country  are  at  last  beginning 
to  see,  that  fetters  imposed  on  trade  are  fetters  im 
posed  on  industry.  He  had  also  had  great  experi 
ence  in  combating  the  sophistries  of  self-interest, 

and  had  learned  to  know  them  when  he  saw  them, 

(184) 


however  artfully  disguised.  "'The  protection  of 
American  labor'  has  a  taking  sound;  but  it  really 
means  the  restriction  and  taxation  of  that  labor. 
Protection  against  what?  Have  we  not  the  best- 
educated  and  most  intelligent  population  on  earth? 
And  does  not  this  imply  industry,  thrift,  skill,  en 
terprise,  invention,  capital,  beyond  any  other  forty 
millions  of  people?  Have  we  not  muscles  as  well  as 
brains?  Have  we  not  a  country  unrivalled  in  the 
variety  and  abundance  of  its  natural  productions, 
and  the  abounding  riches  of  its  mineral  resources? 
What  more  need  we  to  claim,  or  ought  we  to  have? 
If  in  an  open  field  we  cannot  successfully  compete 
with4 the  cheap  arid  pauperized  labor  of  Europe,' 
in  all  that  is  necessary  to  our  comfort,  or  even  to 
our  luxury,  then  let  us  go  to  the  wall !  Was  the 
slave  labor  of  the  South  at  all  a  match  for  the  free 
labor  of  the  North?  In  which  section  of  the  Union 
was  industry  best  protected  or  wealth  most  aug 
mented?  Is  it  not  ludicrous  to  read  what  piteous 
calls  are  made  for  the  protection  of  the  strong 
against  the  weak,  of  the  intelligent  against  the 
ignorant,  of  the  well-fed  against  the  half -starving, 
of  our  free  republican  nation  against  the  effete  gov 
ernments  of  the  Old  World,  in  all  that  relates  to 
the  welfare  of  the  people?  With  all  that  God  has 
done  for  us  in  giving  us  such  a  goodly  heritage,  can 
not  we  contrive  to  live  and  flourish  without  erecting 

(  185 ) 


barriers  against  the  freest  intercourse  with  all  na 
tions?  Must  we  guard  our  ports  against  the  free 
importation  of  hemp,  iron,  broadcloth,  silk,  coal, 
etc.,  as  though  it  were  a  question  of  quarantine  for 
the  small-pox  or  the  Asiatic  cholera?  Refusing  to 
do  so,  will  the  natural  consequences  be  'vacant 
factories,  furnaces  standing  idle,  the  shops  of  man 
ufacturing  industry  closed,  labor  begging  and  starv 
ing  for  the  want  of  employment/  and  all  the  other 
fearful  results  that  are. so  confidently  predicted  by 
the  advocates  of  the  protective  policy,  falsely  so 
called?  Similar  predictions  were  made  by  the 
defenders  of  Southern  slavery  in  regard  to  the  abo 
lition  of  that  nefarious  system,  and  in  order  to 
subject  to  popular  odium  those  wrho  demanded  the 
immediate  and  unconditional  emancipation  of  the 
oppressed.  Freedom,  as  well  as  Wisdom,  is  justified 
of  her  children ;  and  in  proportion  as  she  bears  sway 
will  it  go  well  with  any  people." 

We  are  surprised,  on  the  other  hand,  to  find  com 
paratively  little  on  record  as  to  his  opinions  on  the 
great  question  of  Reconstruction,  or  as  to  the  prac 
tical  results,  political  and  social,  of  Emancipation. 
In  his  reply  to  F.  W.  Newman,  who  had  condemned 
Lincoln  for  not  enfranchising  the  negroes  of  Loui 
siana,  there  is  a  passage  which  has  a  conservative 
ring.  "By  what  political  precedent  or  administra 
tive  policy  in  any  country,"  he  asks,  "could  he  [the 

( 186 ) 


President]  have  been  justified  if  he  had  attempted 
to  do  this?  When  was  it  ever  known  that  liber 
ation  from  bondage  was  accompanied  by  a  recog 
nition  of  political  equality?  Chattels  personal  may 
be  instantly  translated  from  the  auction -block  into 
freemen;  but  when  were  they  ever  taken  at  the 
same  time  to  the  ballot-box  and  invested  with  all 
political  rights  and  immunities?  According  to  the 
laws  of  development  and  progress  it  is  not  practi 
cable.  To  denounce  or  complain  of  President  Lin 
coln  for  not  disregarding  public  sentiment  and  not 
flying  in  the  face  of  these  laws  is  hardly  just.  Be 
sides,  I  doubt  whether  he  has  the  constitutional 
right  to  decide  this  matter.  Ever  since  this 
Government  was  organized,  the  right  of  suffrage 
has  been  determined  by  each  State  in  the  Union 
for  itself,  so  that  there  is  no  uniformity  in  regard 
to  it.  In  some  free  States  colored  citizens  are  al 
lowed  to  vote,  in  others  they  are  not.  It  is  always 
a  State,  never  a  national,  matter.  In  honestly  seek 
ing  to  preserve  the  Union,  it  is  not  for  President 
Lincoln  to  seek,  by  a  special  edict  applied  to  a  par 
ticular  State  or  locality,  to  do  violence  to  a  universal 
rule,  accepted  and  acted  upon  from  the  beginning 
till  now  by  the  States  in  their  individual  sovereignty. 
Under  the  war  power,  he  had  the  constitutional 
right  to  emancipate  the  slaves  in  every  rebel  State, 
and  also  to  insist  that,  in  any  plan  of  reconstruction 

(187) 


that  might  be  agreed  upon,  slavery  should  be  ad 
mitted  to  be  dead,  beyond  power  of  resurrection. 
That  being  accomplished,  I  question  whether  he 
could  safely  or  advantageously — to  say  the  least- 
enforce  a  rule,  ab  initio,  touching  the  ballot  which 
abolishes  complexional  distinctions ;  any  more  than 
he  could  safely  or  advantageously  decree  that  all 
women  (whose  title  is  equally  good)  should  enjoy  the 
electoral  right  and  help  to  form  the  State.  Nor,  if 
the  freed  blacks  were  admitted  to  the  polls  by  Pres 
idential  fiat,  do  I  see  any  permanent  advantage 
likely  to  be  secured  by  it ;  for,  submitted  to  as  a 
necessity  at  the  outset,  as  soon  as  the  State  was 
organized  and  left  to  manage  its  own  affairs,  the 
white  population,  with  their  superior  intelligence, 
wealth  and  power,  would  unquestionably  after  the 
franchise  in  accordance  with  their  prejudices,  and 
exclude  those  thus  summarily  brought  to  the  polls. 
Coercion  would  gain  nothing.  In  other  words — as  in 
your  own  country — universal  suffrage  will  be  hard 
to  win  and  to  hold  without  a  general  preparation 
of  feeling  and  sentiment.  But  it  will  come,  both 
at  the  South  and  with  you ;  yet  only  by  a  struggle 
on  the  part  of  the  disfranchised,  and  a  growing 
conviction  of  its  justice,  '  in  the  good  time  coming. ' 
With  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  South,  preju 
dice,  or  'colorphobia, '  the  natural  product  of  the 
system,  will  gradually  disappear — as  in  the  case  of 

(188) 


your  West  India  colonies — and  black  men  will  win 
their  way  to  wealth,  distinction,  eminence,  and  offi 
cial  station.  I  ask  only  a  charitable  judgment  for 
President  Lincoln  respecting  this  matter,  whether 
in  Louisiana  or  any  other  State." 

Garrison,  however,  favored  the  bestowal  of  the 
suffrage  by  Federal  enactment  on  the  negro.  He 
also  favored  the  impeachment  of  President  John 
son — a  measure  of  violence  justified,  as  fair-minded 
Republicans  like  Fessenden  saw,  by  no  criminal  acts 
on  the  part  of  the  President,  but  adopted  as  a  des 
perate  mode  of  bringing  the  policy  of  the  executive 
again  into  harmony  with  that  of  the  legislature, 
which,  under  the  British  Constitution,  would  have 
been  done  by  a  vote  of  want  of  confidence,  followed 
by  a  change  of  ministry,  but  for  which,  under  the 
American  Constitution,  no  provision  had  been  made. 
Garrison,  it  seems,  would  also  have  maintained  the 
ascendancy  of  the  carpet -bagging  governments  by 
prolonging  the  military  occupation  of  the  South. 
For  this,  Kuklux  outrage  had  given  him  at  least  a 
tenable  ground.  Later  on,  though  he  took  no  act 
ive  part  in  politics,  his  heart  seems  to  have  been 
with  that  party  of  uncompromising  Emancipationists 
whose  policy  was  nicknamed  by  moderates  that  of 
" shaking  the  Bloody  Shirt."  He  insisted  on  the 
adoption  of  every  possible  measure  for  levelling  the 

barrier  of  race,  and  protested  against  the  omission 

(  18!) ) 


from  the  Civil  Rights  bill  of  participation  in  the 
common  schools.  He  deprecated  the  erection  by 
colored  people  of  a  church  for  their  own  race,  and 
pointed  to  Berea  College,  in  Kentucky,  where  the 
races  were  educated  together,  as  showing  the  true 
way  to  the  pacification  and  happiness  of  the  South. 
But  he  lived  fifteen  years  after  Emancipation.  Did 
he  carefully  observe  its  results?  Did  he  make  a 
calm  study  of  the  situation?  Did  he  watch  the 
progress  of  the  negroes  in  the  South  and  compare  it 
with  their  progress  in  Hayti  or  Liberia,  where  they 
were  not  under  the  political  tutelage  of  the  white 
race?  Above  all,  did  events  appear  to  him  to  show 
that  there  was  any  hope  of  the  fusion  of  the  races? 
Without  intermarriage  there  can  hardly  be  social 
equality ;  without  social  equality  there  can  hardly 
be  real  political  equality  or  a  genuine  commonwealth, 
let  the  franchise  be  distributed  as  it  may.  The 
Eoman  Commons  were  in  the  right  when,  having 
wrested  from  the  politicians  a  share  of  all  political 
franchises  and  offices,  they  still  refused  to  rest  con 
tent  without  the  concession  of  intermarriage.  But 
the  Patricians  and  Plebeians  were,  if  not  of  the 
same,  of  kindred  races ;  there  was  at  any  rate  no 
barrier  of  color  or  of  physical  antipathy  between 
them.  The  same  may  be  said  of  other  cases  in 
which  Emancipation  has  been  a  complete  success, 

as  in  that  of  the  enfranchisement  of  the  mediaeval 

(190) 


serfs.  But  fusion  between  the  races  in  the  South 
ern  States  has,  since  Emancipation,  become  more 
impossible  than  ever.  The  link,  evil  as  it  was  in 
its  source,  of  half-caste  population,  by  which  they 
were  formerly  connected,  cannot  fail  to  dwindle 
when  the  black  wToman  is  no  longer  at  the  mercy 
of  the  white  overseer.  The  social  feeling  of  the 
superior  against  the  inferior  race  is  not  likely  to  be 
softened  but  rather  intensified  when  the  inferior 
race  has  pretensions  to  equality.  In  the  West  In 
dies  there  has  been  no  fusion  of  races.  In  Jamaica 
there  was  political  discord,  which  at  last  broke  out 
into  murderous  conflict,  when  the  Imperial  Govern 
ment,  by  which  Emancipation  had  been  ordained, 
threw  down  its  warder  between  the  combatants  and 
restored  peace  by  suspending  the  Constitution.  In 
the  Southern  States  there  is  no  controlling  and 
arbitrating  power  but  Congress,  which  is  not,  like 
the  British  Government,  impartial,  the  Southern 
whites  having  a  strong  representation  in  it  and 
almost  a  veto  on  its  action,  while  the  action  on  the 
other  side  is  swayed  by  desire  of  the  negro  vote. 
The  practical  solution  for  the  present  seems  to  be 
the  political  domination  of  the  white  race  and  the 
exclusion,  in  the  mass,  of  the  black  race  from  the 
ballot.  Personal  liberty  the  black  has  gained,  and 
personal  security,  except  that  he  is  still  too  often 
lynched  by  white  lawlessness  instead  of  being,  like 


the  whites,  tried  by  jury.  Industrial  freedom  he 
also  enjoys,  and,  thanks  to  his  possession  of  it,  his 
material  condition  has  already  been  improved.  This 
would  not  have  satisfied  Garrison,  who  demanded 
for  the  negro  nothing  less  than  full  American  citi 
zenship.  But,  once  more,  he  had  never  looked  fairly 
in  the  face  the  terrible  problem  of  race,  of  which 
personal  and  industrial  liberty  without  the  power 
of  exercising  the  franchise  is  at  least  a  provisional 
solution.  What  the  ultimate  solution  will  be,  and 
whether  it  will  certainly  be  brought  about  without 
social  war,  is  a  question  which  the  best  heads  in  the 

United  States  appear  at  present  unable  to  answer. 

(192) 


XIV. 

"  I  BEGAN  the  publication  of  the  Liberator  with 
out  a  subscriber,  and  I  end  it — it  gives  me  unal 
loyed  satisfaction  to  say — without  a  farthing  as  the 
pecuniary  result  of  the  patronage  extended  to  it 
during  thirty-five  years  of  unremitted  labors." 
These  were  Garrison's  words  when  he  brought  his 
editorship  to  a  close.  The  contrast  is  curious  be 
tween  the  barrenness  of  Abolitionist  journalism  and 
the  immensely  profitable  circulation  of  the  Aboli 
tionist  novel.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  with 
Garrison's  vigor  and  readiness  in  writing  as  an 
ordinary  journalist  he  would  have  made  a  good  in 
come.  It  would  have  been  rank  ingratitude  to 
allow  a  great  servant  of  the  country  and  of  human 
ity  to  close  his  days  in  penury.  The  sum  of  thirty - 
one  thousand  dollars  was  raised  for  him  by  subscrip 
tion,  and  if  he  had  hesitated  to  accept  it  he  would 
have  done  a  wrong  to  his  fellow-citizens. 

In  1867  Garrison  went  to  rejoice  with  his  friends 
in  England  over  the  triumph  of  their  common  cause. 

He  met  with  an  enthusiastic  reception  in  all  parts 

(193) 


of  the  country.  In  his  mind,  at  all  events,  the 
baseless  belief  that  the  English  people  were  on  the 
side  of  slavery  can  never  have  found  place.  The 
attendance  at  a  complimentary  breakfast  given  him 
in  London  presents  a  long  list  of  famous  names, 
and  among  them  that  of  Lord  Russell,  who  had 
come  expressly  to  recall  any  unjust  things  which, 
misled  by  the  offers  of  compromise  with  slavery 
made  in  Congress  on  the  approach  of  the  war,  he 
might  have  said  of  Lincoln  and  the  American 
Government.  Mill  pronounced  the  eulogy  of  phi 
losophy  on  the  reformer  who  had  been  derided  as 
an  incendiary  and  a  fanatic. 

But  the  principal  part  on  the  occasion  was  justly 
assigned  to  Bright,  who  throughout  the  conflict  had 
upheld  with  his  noblest  eloquence  the  cause  of  the 
North,  though  to  his  memory,  when  he  died,  the 
Senate  of  the  United  States  refused  to  pay  a  tribute, 
because,  having  been  the  firm  friend  of  their  Union, 
he  had  been  loyal  also  to  his  own.  George  Thomp 
son  was  there  with  his  son-iii-law,  F.  W.  Chesson, 
a  man  who  by  the  steadfast,  unselfish  and  modest 
devotion  of  a  life  to  the  championship  of  weak  and 
oppressed  races,  earned  though  he  did  not  wear  a 
crown.  His  name,  by  most  readers  hardly  noticed 
among  those  of  the  illustrious  company  at  the  Gar 
rison  breakfast,  shines  conspicuous  in  the  eyes  .of  all 

(194) 


who  had  watched  his  life-long  lahors  and  knew  his 
worth. 

It  was  one  of  the  proofs  of  Garrison's  freedom 
from  personal  ambition  and  the  irritability  which  it 
is  apt  to  engender,  that  he  carried  through  all  his 
controversies  and  through  the  life-long  storm  of  ob 
loquy  and  abuse  a  temper  in  private  perfectly  uii- 
soured,  warm  affections,  and  the  fullest  capacity 
for  domestic  enjoyment.  His  wife,  who  had  gone 
through  the  tempests  at  his  side,  and  to  whom  he 
was  tenderly  attached,  after  being  long  a  sufferer 
from  ill-health,  died  three  years  before  him.  But 
his  sons  remained  to  him.  There  remained  to  him, 
also,  many  of  his  old  fellow-crusaders  and  friends. 
Isaac  Knapp,  his  partner  in  the  Liberator,  had,  in 
the  midst  of  the  first  agitation,  fallen,  sad  to  relate, 
into  evil  habits,  and,  in  spite  of  Garrison's  generous 
efforts  to  redeem  him,  had  come  to  a  bad  end. 
Lundy  had  also  departed  early,  and  before  his  death 
there  had  been  a  coolness  on  his  side,  caused  by 
divergence  of  policy,  which,  however,  had  not  pre 
vented  his  former  coadjutor  from  rendering  full 
justice  to  his  memory.  Wendell  Phillips  had  drifted 
away  on  the  tide  of  battles  in  which  Garrison  had 
no  part.  But  Oliver  Johnson  and  S.  May,  Jr.,  were 
still  at  their  leader's  side.  Garrison's  old  age  was 
the  serene  evening  of  a  stormy  yet  happy  day.  It 

(195) 


was  so  serene  that  he  could  find  amusement,  we  are 
told,  in  whist,  but  had  too  much  openness  of  nature 
to  conceal  his  hand.  He  died  in  New  York  City 
in  his  seventy- fourth  year,  May  24,  1879,  and  was 
buried  in  Boston,  where  the  best  years  of  his  life 
had  been  spent. 

(196) 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 3 

SECTION  I. — The  Garrison  family— Garrison's  boyhood — His 
apprentice  years  as  a  printer — Early  essays  as  a  writer — 
Connection  with  the  Newburyport  Herald — Visits  Boston — 
Connection  with  the  National  Philanthropist  there 7 

SECTION  II. — Garrison  forms  the  acquaintance  of  the  Aboli 
tionist  advocate,  Benjamin  Lundy — Edits  the  Journal  of 
the  Times  at  Bennington,  Vt. — Petitions  Congress  to  abol 
ish  slavery  in  District  of  Columbia — Fined  for  non-service 
in  militia— Delivers  a  Fourth  of  July  address  in  Boston, 
on  the  national  sin  of  slavery — Personal  appearance  and 
dress 19 

SECTION  III. — Forms  partnership  with  Lundy  and  becomes 
associate  editor  of  the  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation — 
Sees  iniquities  of  the  slave  traffic  at  Baltimore — Advocates 
immediate  emancipation— Encounter  with  slave-trader — 
Denounces  owner  of  a  slave  ship — Sued  for  libel,  is  con 
victed  and  imprisoned — Life  in  prison — Discussion  with  a 
slaveholder — Writes  abolition  poetry — Arthur  Tappan,  the 
philanthropist,  pays  Garrison's  fine — Garrison  begins  to 
lecture  for  the  anti -slavery  cause — Churches  are  closed 
against  him— Makes  a  disciple  of  Samuel  J.  May — Isaac 
Knapp  joins  Garrison  in  setting  up  another  anti -slavery 
journal 30 

SECTION  IV.— Founding  of  the  Liberator  at  Boston — Motto 
of  the  new  journal — Garrison  launched  on  his  life's  work 
— Early  hardships  and  ceaseless  opposition — Slavery  every 
where  dominant — National  morality  dumb 40 

(197) 


PAGE 

SECTION  V.  — Ancient  slavery — Condition  of  the  slave  at 
Athens  and  Rome — No  insurmountable  barrier  of  race — 
Friendship  and  sometimes  moral  equality  between  the  slave 
and  a  good  master — Slavery  in  America  contrasted — Effect 
on  the  character  of  the  slaveholder,  a  trampler  on  human 
ity — Society  in  the  Cotton  States — Representatives  of  the 
Slave  States  in  Congress — Their  political  strength  and  as 
sumption  of  social  superiority — Rising  of  slaves  at  South 
ampton,  Virginia — Terrible  outpouring  of  white  vengeance 
— The  Negro  at  the  North  a  pariah — Caste  and  the  bar  of 
color 47 

SECTION  VI. — Garrison's  Abolition  platform  in  the  Liberator 
— Severity  of  his  denunciations  of  slavery — Compensation 
to  the  slave-owner  scouted  by  the  Liberator — Wrongf  ulness 
of  emancipation  without  it — Abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
West  Indies — The  realm  of  slavery  disturbed  by  the  Lib 
erator — The  journal  boycotted  and  its  editor  threatened 
— Nat  Turner's  rising — Chief  Justice  Taney's  judgment — 
Race  exclusiveness  at  the  North — Garrison  at  war  with 
caste  feeling — Insoluble  problem  of  the  races — Prudence 
Crandall  opens  a  school  for  colored  children — She  is  per 
secuted  and  the  school  broken  up— Organization  of  the 
New  England  Anti- Slavery  Society — Preamble  of  its  con 
stitution  and  objects  aimed  at 57 

SECTION  VI.  A. — Garrison's  antagonism  to  the  Coloniza 
tion  Society — Why  he  assailed  its  doctrines  and  purposes 
— Visits  England  as  the  representative  of  American  Abo 
litionism — Heartiness  of  his  welcome— Buxton's  mistake 
— Great  meeting  at  Exeter  Hall — O'Connell's  invective 
against  slavery — Garrison  returns  to  America — Accused  of 
having  traduced  his  country  in  England — Incendiary  vio 
lence  of  the  pro-slavery  press — The  Liberator's  reply  to  his 
calumniators — Garrison's  marriage — The  American  Anti- 
Slavery  Society  founded  at  Philadelphia — Garrison  drafts 
the  Declaration  of  Sentiments — Object  of  the  Convention 
and  the  movement  which  it  embodied,  "  to  bring  the  whole 
nation  to  speedy  repentance" 73 

SECTION  VII.  — A  British  anti -slavery  lecturer  visits  America 
— Violent  outcry  against  the  "  foreign  emissary" — A  public 

(198) 


PAGE 

meeting  at  Boston  denounces  Thompson — Garrison  criti 
cises  the  speeches  and  speakers  at  the  meeting — Inflamed 
state  of  the  public  mind — Garrison  falls  into  the  hands  of 
the  mob — Rescued  by  the  Mayor  of  Boston,  he  spends  the 
night  in  prison — Thompson  escapes  and  returns  to  England 
—The  Abolitionists  suffer  martyrdom  for  the  cause 89 

SECTION  VIII. — Garrison  devotes  himself  more  assiduously 
to  lecturing— His  mental  gifts  as  an  orator — Growth  of  the 
Abolition  movement — Its  effect  on  the  politicians — The 
Liberator  opposed  to  the  movement  becoming  political — 
J.  G.  Birney  organizes  the  Liberty  Party  and  becomes  its 
candidate  for  the  Presidency — The  Churches  in  relation  to 
the  anti-slavery  crusade — The  Bible  and  American  slavery  97 

SECTION  IX.  — Garrison  breaks  with  the  Churches — Bids  fare 
well  to  orthodox  Christianity — Embraces  Woman's  Rights 
and  asserts  the  political  equality  of  the  sexes — Comes  un 
der  the  influence  of  J.  Humphrey  Noyes— Is  attracted  by 
Perfectionism  and  espouses  the  doctrine  of  Non-resistance 
— Imports  both  into  the  columns  of  the  Liberator — Dismay 
of  his  friends — Condemns  Lovejoy  for  defending  himself 
against  his  assassins — Abolitionism  fears  being  compro 
mised  by  Garrison's  heresies — Defection  of  some  of  his 
friends — The  schism  affects  the  Liberator,  and  displays 
itself  in  the  two  chief  anti- slavery  societies — The  leader 
ship  in  dispute — Garrison  confirmed  in  the  leadership 109 

SECTION  X. — Garrison  attends  the  World's  Convention  in 
London — English  prejudice  against  women  delegates — 
Success  of  the  Convention — Gratifying  reception  in  Eng 
land — Redmond,  the  negro  delegate — Turn  of  the  tide  in 
America — Abolitionism  gathers  strength — Garrison's  po 
etic  effusions — Discussion  of  the  Sabbath  question — The 
Liberator  exonerates  himself  from  the  charge  of  infidelity  126 

SECTION  XI.  — "  Moral  Ploughshares" — Attacks  on  the  clergy 
—Temperance  and  other  moral  movements — Ireland's  ap 
peal  against  slavery  in  the  United  States — Defection  of  the 
Irish  in  America — Kossuth  and  Father  Mathew  disappoint 
the  Abolitionists  in  their  attitude  toward  slavery — Fur 
ther  visit  to  Britain — Disruption  in  the  Scottish  Church 
— Garrison  deprecates  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  taking 

(11MM 


money  from  the  Southern  Presbyterians — He  declares  for 
the  dissolution  of  the  Union — Slavery  and  the  Constitution 
— "The  irrepressible  conflict" — Union  with  slaveholders 
characterized  as  a  "  covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement 
with  hell" — The  Liberator's  No- Government  theory  breaks 
down — Accompanied  by  Fred  Douglass,  Garrison  carries 
the  torch  of  conscience  into  the  West — Further  experience 
of  the  existence  of  caste  feeling — Garrison  presides  at  an 
annual  meeting  of  the  Anti -Slavery  Society  at  New  York — 
The  Rynders'  incident — Effects  of  the  new  Fugitive  Slave 
Law — English  testimonial  to  the  Liberator — "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin" — The  combat  deepens — Massachusetts  on  the  side  of 
freedom — The  Framingham  demonstration 134 

SECTION  XII.  — The  approach  of  civil  war — John  Brown's  raid 
on  Virginia — The  political  parties  divide  on  Mason  and 
Dixon's  Line — Lincoln  appears  on  the  scene — The  Southern 

'  leaders  take  leave  of  Congress — Rebellion — The  politicians 
truckle  to  the  Slave  South — Hollowness  of  the  moral  pro 
fessions  of  the  North — Garrison's  attitude  in  relation  to 
the  war — Non-resistance  and  the  draft — Lincoln  and  the 
Emancipation  Proclamation — Colored  regiments  in  the 
war — The  draft  riots  at  New  York — Calhoun  versus  the 
Liberator — The  moral  turning-point  of  the  war 162 

SECTION  XIII.  — The  Union  preserved  and  slavery  doomed — 
The  Thirteenth  Amendment — Close  of  the  Liberator's  work 
—Wendell  Phillips'  motion  to  maintain  the  Anti -Slavery 
Society  prevails — Garrison  withdraws  from  the  Society 
and  discontinues  the  Liberator — His  valedictory — Again 
champions  Temperance  and  espouses  Free  Trade — Compar 
ative  silence  on  the  question  of  Reconstruction 180 

SECTION  XIV. — Public  testimonial  to  the  Liberator — Final 
visit  to  England — Complimentary  breakfast  in  London — 

Personal  traits  ;  closing  years  ;  death 193 

(200) 


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